Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: The Church Year

  • Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading today, we have an instruction on the virtue of integrity. Integrity is that virtue by which we show that we are who we say we are, that we are in our secret moments what we are in our public ones, that we walk the walk and talk the talk. Our first reading speaks of the blessings of a life of integrity: “Compassionate and merciful is the LORD; he forgives sins, he saves in time of trouble and he is a protector to all who seek him in truth.” Seeking the Lord in truth is the cornerstone of integrity, because to be people of integrity we have to find him in the simplicity of our hearts.

    Integrity requires steadfast faith and careful study: “incline your ear and receive the word of understanding, undisturbed in time of adversity.” If we seek the Lord’s will and open our minds and hearts, we will receive that will in God’s time. Exposing our hearts and minds to Scripture and meditation will allow God to form us in his ways.

    Integrity requires patient acceptance of our station of life: “Accept whatever befalls you, when sorrowful, be steadfast, and in crushing misfortune be patient…” Being people of faith is easy in good times, but being people of faith in hard times requires character, and allows God to hone that faith to be a source of real strength.

    Integrity requires trust in God: “Trust God and God will help you; trust in him, and he will direct your way…” Trust is following God, not knowing where he will lead you, but knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that wherever he leads you will be for the greatest possible good.

    Integrity requires humility too, as the apostles found out when they reached Capernaum. It doesn’t take any integrity to declare oneself the greatest, it requires integrity to know that any greatness that we might have is really a sharing in the awesome greatness of our God.

    The Psalmist instructs us today: “Commit your life to the Lord, and he will help you.” May that commitment be a commitment to integrity and a sharing in the life of God.

  • Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the graces that I have here at the parish is that whenever I go to parish meetings, we always pray through the Gospel for the coming Sunday and discuss it. The Spirit works through the community, and more often than not, I’ll start thinking about the readings in a different light than I might have all by myself. This week I met on Monday with the finance committee, and so as we prayed through this Gospel, I had my finance committee thinking cap on. So my first thought was, well, the place where Jesus is meeting is too small by far, so we’re going to have to initiate a building campaign, and that’s going to be a lot of work. The second thought was, great, they’ve cut a hole in the roof and now we have to pay to have that fixed! I did not share those thoughts out loud and, thankfully, the Spirit was working in the folks on the committee, who expressed much more pious thoughts!

    There’s a lot of paralysis going on in these readings. In the first reading, it’s the whole nation of Israel that is paralyzed. They are in captivity in Babylon, and their oppression is pretty cruel. They longed for God to come and rid them of their exile, as he had when they were slaves in Egypt. Where are God’s mercies of the past? When will their exile come to an end? Isaiah speaks to them words of consolation today. God will not just lead them back to their land, making a way through the desert and a river through the wasteland. But he is also doing something new: he will deal with the root cause of their paralysis: sin. It was sin that led them into slavery in Egypt, it was sin that led them to captivity in Babylon. So if they are to be truly freed, truly healed of their paralysis, they need to be forgiven of their sins. And it is only God who can do that, so he takes the initiative to do that new thing among them. Praise God!

    The paralysis in the Gospel is more literal, but also works on the figurative level here too. The center of attention might seem to be the paralytic, but really it’s Jesus. Jesus has the crowds captivated, preaching words that have them spellbound. So much so, that he can hardly move, for all the crowds around him! Seeing this, the paralytic’s friends take bold action: they haul him up onto the roof, make a hole in it, and lower him down, right in the midst of Jesus and his hearers. You have to imagine that the crowds are on the edge of their seats – except there probably wasn’t room for any chairs – and they were just waiting with eager anticipation to see what Jesus would do now. Who could heal a paralytic? Jesus speaks curious words: “Child, your sins are forgiven.” – What on earth can that mean? Who has the audacity to say he can forgive sins? Why doesn’t he just heal the man as the man had hoped for?

    But Jesus is doing something new too. These last several weeks, we have been hearing about Jesus healing all sorts of people, including a leper just last week. And through it all, he’s been telling them to keep it quiet – not that they did! – because he wasn’t healing people just be known as a wonder worker. He’s trying to get at the root cause of the people’s paralysis, the real disease and not just the symptom. And that disease is, of course, sin. “Child, your sins are forgiven.” Those are the words he speaks to the paralytic, because he insists on healing the man from the inside out. The physical paralysis was nothing, the really paralyzing thing was sin. Sin paralyzes us all from time to time. It affects our prayer life, our vocation, our relationships. It holds us back, it keeps us from moving on to what God intends for us. When we are paralyzed by sin, nothing good can come to us, nothing good can even be seen in us or by us. Sin is quite literally deadly. And so, yeah, Jesus can heal a man’s paralysis, but whoa, he can even heal the sinfulness of the whole human family. Now that’s a wonder worker! Healing the world of sin was the whole reason for Jesus being here in the first place. Praise God!

    We are here today on the precipice of a new season of the Church year. This Wednesday is the beginning of our Lent, the beginning of that time of year when we all have the opportunity to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel. It’s a forty-ish day retreat for us; we can take stock of those sins that have held us back, and bring them to our Jesus who came that they might be blotted out. And we know that, as good as our lives tend to be, as faithful as we try to be, we have, on occasion, blown it, both individually and as a human family. We have missed opportunities to be of service. We have held on to grudges and past hurts. We have broken relationships through the distractions of lust in its many forms. We have taken what belongs to others, maybe not giving an honest day’s work for our pay, or taking credit for work that was not ours. We have stolen from the poor, either by not making an effort to reach out to them, or by wasting resources. We have deprived God of the worship due to him, either by missing Mass for yet another soccer game, or by being inattentive at Mass or forgetting our prayers. We have taken the lives of others by allowing abortion to continue its pandemic spread through the world, or by not caring for the sick, or by allowing racial bigotry to go unchallenged. We have dishonored our parents and ancestors by allowing the elderly to die alone, or by allowing the cost of health care to be beyond what people can pay. You get the idea – our personal and communal sins have been myriad, and they have paralyzed us for far too long.

    But our Lent is a gift to us. Our ashes remind us that we will not live forever, so the time to open ourselves up to change is now. We will have these days to concentrate on fasting, almsgiving and prayer. This is a gift, but also a responsibility; it is likewise sinful to ignore the opportunity completely. Our fasting might be food, or it might be something else that consumes us, like television or the internet. Our almsgiving can consist of any or all of the traditional ways of time, talent, and treasure. Our prayer can be communal or personal, devotional or reflective, whatever it is that is going to lead us face-to-face with Christ. This is also a time to rid ourselves of the sin that binds us, to hear those wonderful words spoken to us as well: “Child, your sins are forgiven.” We have so many opportunities planned for the Sacrament of Penance, that if you cannot find a time to go to Confession, you’re just not looking hard enough!

    But if it’s the length of time since you last received that sacrament that is paralyzing you, then you need to hear what I always tell people about the Sacrament of Penance: Don’t let anything stop you. When you go into the confessional, tell the priest: “Father it’s been years since my last confession, and I might need some help to do this right.” If he doesn’t welcome you back and fall all over himself trying to help you make a good confession, you have my permission to get up and leave and go find a priest who is more welcoming. Because it is my job to help you make a good confession, it is my job to make sure the experience is meaningful for you, it is my job to make you want to come back, and I take that very seriously. I know that Fr. Ted does too.

    The important thing to remember in all of this is that you cannot let anything stop you from being healed of what paralyzes you. If need be, make a hole in the roof so that you can end up right at the feet of Jesus. Lent is our gift from God, that opportunity that he initiates to do something new among us. Let’s not ever turn away from that gift. Our staff had a retreat day this week, and in it we heard these words from the Rule of St. Benedict which I think tell us everything we should learn from today’s Liturgy of the Word: “Let no one follow what he thinks profitable to himself, but rather that which is profitable to another; let them show unto each other all … charity with a chaste love. Let them fear God, … and prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may He bring us all together to life everlasting. Amen.”

  • Saturday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” The writer of the letter to the Hebrews sums up for us this notion of faith, which can be so difficult to wrap our minds around. What I love about the definition of faith that comes to us in this passage is that it seems to be telling us what we at some level already know: faith is a heritage. The passage speaks of the faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah, all stories we can readily read in our Old Testament, stories of men who had to really take a leap of faith because what they hoped for was unseen. Only God could fulfill all their hopes and longings.

    The same, of course, is true for us. We are living in difficult times. There is uncertainty in the economy to the point that probably none of us can say that we don’t know someone affected by layoffs, devalued stock, or a dwindling economy. There is uncertainty in the world, with wars being fought almost everywhere we can think of, and especially our own men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our own state has political issues to the point that it’s hard to know which politicians are honest and which are not, and we almost hate to turn on the television and hear of how deep the scandal has grown. We have our own personal family uncertainties, maybe loved ones are sick, or are suffering from depression. Maybe relationships are strained.

    For all of us who live in these uncertain times, Jesus offers us hope. We get a glimpse today at what we hope for and cannot now see: Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James and John. This is a foretaste of the glory of the Resurrection, a glory that Jesus knew when he rose from the dead, and a glory that we yet hope for. It’s not pie in the sky: we know that our promise in Christ is greater than any of the difficulties our time can bring us. We know that faith is our heritage, and that that faith has led all of our forebears through times as difficult or more difficult than this. Today, we have the promise of things hoped for and evidence of things unseen: Christ is our hope, yesterday, today and for ever.

  • Thursday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In the aftermath of the great flood, what’s left is what God wants us to know is important: life. Life is the way we participate in the essence of our Creator God. And that life is so important that absolutely nothing could completely blot it out – not even the waters of the flood. What humankind had done to bring on the flood was not enough for God to allow that deed to completely blot out all life from the face of the earth. Indeed, God preserved life in the Ark so that, even in its impure and imperfect state, it could be brought to perfection in these last days.

    These last days came about through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. What the flood could not wash away was cleansed completely by the blood of the Lamb. Unfortunately, Peter and the Apostles did not yet understand that. Jesus rebuked Peter not just because he was slow to get the message, but more because his kind of thinking was an obstacle to the mission. The mission is about life – eternal life – and nothing must interfere with it.

    We are the recipients of the command to be fertile and multiply. This command is not just about procreation of life, but also about life in the Kingdom of God. It was always God’s plan that we would not only populate the earth, but populate heaven as well. That’s what we were created for, and that’s why God would sooner allow his Son to die on the cross than live without us. That’s what that rainbow sign of the covenant was about – when we see one, may we remember the love of God.

  • 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.  These are deadly sins, and they have continued to plague humankind ever since.

    We start with envy, as Cain laments that his offering was not accepted with the same favor as was 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.

  • Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “I do will it.  Be made clean.”

    When I was in seminary, I did my hospital chaplaincy in my fourth summer at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove.  Every once in a while I would come to a room that was marked with a prominent sign stating that the room was quarantined and outlining a whole list of restrictions to any visitor who would enter.  Those restrictions usually required a mask and sterile gloves, and often a sterile gown as well.  The problem with all that is that it’s a real obstacle to any kind of effective ministry to the sick.  So we were taught to ask at the nurse’s station whether the protection was for the patient’s benefit or for ours.  If it was for the patient’s benefit, we would of course wear everything that was required; but if it was for our benefit we would have to assess how risky the situation was.  Often it wasn’t a problem for the brief time we would be visiting, and we would do without some of the protection.

    Jesus today finds himself in much the same ministry situation.  A leper comes to him and kneels before him.  If we have been listening to the first reading today, we know that that kind of behavior was forbidden.  They didn’t have masks and gloves and gowns in those days, so the prescribed behavior was that the leper was to live apart from the community to avoid infecting anyone else.  But the leper doesn’t do that.  Instead, he comes to Jesus, and kneels at his feet, stating the obvious: “If you wish, you can make me clean.”  And of course Jesus agrees with those wonderful words: “I do will it.  Be made clean.”  But what’s worth noting here is that Jesus too ignores all those prescriptions in our first reading, and actually touches the leper, something that would have been completely unheard of.  Jesus too recognized that all those quarantine warnings were a real obstacle to any kind of effective ministry to the sick.

    The issue is touch.  The Church realizes that God acts through the healing touch of doctors, care givers, family and ministers in the life of those who are hurting.  Every sacrament has what is called an “imposition of hands,” recognizing that the Holy Spirit makes the sacrament happen as the minister imposes hands in prayer.  That’s the whole reason for all those hand pictures in room 162.  In the rite of the Anointing of the Sick in particular, hands are imposed on the sick person’s head.  If there are family members or friends present, I usually invite them to impose hands too.  And then the priest imposes his hands by anointing the person with oil on their forehead and their hands.  All of this comes from the example of Jesus who actually touched those who were sick and raised them up.  There is healing in the power of touch.

    But there is difficulty with touch, too, isn’t there?  Sometimes touch is misused, and sometimes touch is unwelcome.  There may be good reasons for those feelings, and we need to respect them.  Even the Church’s own Liturgy allows for adaptations of the imposition of hands in various circumstances.  For example, I almost never actually touch a penitent’s head in confession because there’s just two of us there, and I don’t want anything to even appear improper.  But still I have to recognize that the lack of touch is a real obstacle to effective ministry to those in need.  Because touch used in a healthy, prayerful and ministerial way is a sign of the presence of Jesus, in whose place I am standing, and an invocation of the Holy Spirit.  The Church simply recognizes that what our experience teaches us: in general, touch heals, touch empowers and touch guides.

    If we’re having problems with touch and there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for it, maybe we have to look deeper.  Certainly if we have been abused or mistreated in some way, a reticence to be touched is understandable, but still is something we need to have healed.  But if we can’t bear to enter a hospital to visit a sick relative, let alone touch them, then we may have to look into ourselves and deal with our fear of sickness or death.  If we find it difficult to forgive others let alone embrace them in reconciliation, then we may have to look into ourselves and deal with the unconfessed sin in our own lives that keeps us from any kind of reconciliation.  If we cannot bear to put a quarter in the box being held out to us by a homeless person on the street, then we may have to look into our lives and deal with our own poverty; deal with what we ourselves lack in some spiritual sense.  Human nature longs for touch from the womb – mothers know this – and so if we now have difficulty being touched, whether that touch is an actual touch or a spiritual one, then there is something off, something wrong, some fear or sin that needs to be dealt with, some emptiness that needs to be filled up, and we’ll never be holy, never be whole until we do it.

    We ourselves may have come to this Eucharist today in need of touch, in need of being made whole.  In the quiet moments of today’s Liturgy, it would be good for us to look into our hearts and identify what kind of touch we need, or what it is we need to deal with so that we can receive that touch in the Spirit in which it is offered.  That’s where we need to start, because we disciples are called to touch our world.  We will never be able to do that if we have not accepted Christ’s healing touch in our lives.  Only when we have can we go out and visit the sick, holding their hands and praying with them for God’s healing and mercy.  Only then can we embrace those who have wronged us and be reconciled with them.  Only then can we enter the homes of the poor, as our St. Vincent dePaul Society will be doing, and give them the hand up that they need.  Only then can we reach out to someone who is hurting, as our Stephen Ministry will be doing, and guide them back to grace.  Only then can we take the hand of a child and teach them about God’s love.

    The world yearns for healing, yearns for the touch of Christ.  And Jesus will not leave things according to the Levitical Law of our first reading.  Jesus instead opts to break the rules and reach out to all of us needy ones, touching our lives with grace.  And he wants us to do that too.  He wants us to be fountains of his love and grace, healing the sick, releasing those imprisoned by whatever holds them back, and kissing the leper clean.  To all of us broken ones, he says loud and clear today, embracing us as he always does, “I do will it.  Be made clean!  I do will it.  Be made clean!  I do will it.  Be made clean!”

    We usually take some quiet time after the homily.  But today, I would like to invite us all to respond to the Word of God in a different way.  Please stand with me now, take out the half sheets with “The Summons” on it, and sing together verses 1, 3 and 5.

    The Summons

    John L. Bell, Tune: KELVINGROVE 7 6 7 6 777 6

    Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
    Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?
    Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,
    Will you let my life be shown in you and you in me?

    Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?
    Will you set the pris’ners free and never be the same?
    Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen,
    And admit to what I mean in you and you in me?

    Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.
    Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
    In your company I’ll go, where your love and footsteps show.
    Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

  • 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.  This is significant because the Scriptures, as you probably know, don’t make nearly enough mention of women; this is a side-effect of the times during which the Scriptures were written.  But I think the point of view that the Scriptures present overall is that men and women are integral partners in the work of creation and redemption, and today’s Liturgy of the Word is a shining example of that.

    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 the astounding new creation is all of creation complete.  Now the work of creation goes on all the time, of course, but only 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.

  • Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    A while ago now, I was working at my home parish, St. Petronille, on the staff as a youth minister.  I remember the parish secretary well, she was a very nice woman named Dorothy.  Whenever you’d ask Dorothy how she was, she’d always say, “Busy, busy, busy!”  And I’m sure that she was busy, but it was almost like she was defending her job or something, afraid anyone would find her sitting around.  In truth, she was the last person anyone would suspect of slacking off.

    We have some strange readings today.  Part of the issue is that St. Mark’s Gospel is kind of weird.  As you may know, it’s the shortest of the four Gospels we have.  And so when we read it, we find that everything is packed in a very short space.  Our teens have to read a Gospel for their Confirmation project, and many of them pick Mark because it’s the shortest.  The bad news is, that it’s so short, and with so much packed in, that it can sometimes be a lot harder to understand than the others.

    And so as we approach Mark’s Gospel, we almost feel a bit breathless.  The story moves so quickly, and Jesus appears to be a lot like Dorothy: “Busy, busy, busy!”  The man can barely find some time to relax with his disciples, or spend some time in prayer before the crowds are hemming in around him, banging on the door, a whole town’s worth of them, bringing Jesus their hurting and ailing and broken friends and loved ones.  And even though Jesus sympathizes with them, even though he certainly gives them what they ask for, he doesn’t want to be known as the “wonder worker.”  His message is a lot more complex than that, a lot more important than even saving someone’s bodily life.

    And the disciples are part of the problem for him.  They don’t get it yet, so they rapidly get caught up in the frenzy.  “Everyone is looking for you,” they tell him, almost as if they too can’t wait to see what Jesus will do next.  And so Jesus becomes a mirror of Job in our first reading, who gives himself to the drudgery of what’s expected of him, without any rest in sight.

    Do you feel the weariness?  Do you identify with the frenzy?

    I think maybe a lot of us are there right now.  It’s been a long winter, and well, it’s just February, so it could go on another couple of months.  We’ve come through the frantic Christmas season, and just have a couple of weeks to go before we’re into Lent.  Parents, priests, pastoral ministers, all of us are in the middle of frenzy almost all the time.  It can be easy to identify with Job who doesn’t see an end in sight, or at least to feel the frustration of Jesus as he longs to have some quiet time, some time away, to recharge the energy and fill up the reservoir of the Spirit.  And yet it always seems like that time never comes, right?

    So I’m not going to stand here and tell you that you have to take some time to be connected to God or to pray more or to have some peace and quiet.  You know that.  You’d probably give anything to experience it.  You probably even know that that quiet, recharging time would make you a better parent, a better employee or employer, a better teacher, a better doctor, a better whatever it is that you do.  We all have obligations imposed on us, just like St. Paul was obligated to preach the Gospel, and just like Jesus had the care of his flock given to him by the Father.  And just like Jesus, when we sneak away – even rising before dawn to steal away for some quiet and prayer – all too soon everybody is looking for us and it’s time to move on to the next thing, and the thing after that.

    And we know the problem with all of this.  The problem is that when we run on empty for too long, when we lose track of the last time we had an opportunity to recharge, well, then life becomes a drudgery for us.  And it doesn’t matter that our life is blessed beyond imagining.  It doesn’t matter if we have a dream job, or a wonderful family, or if we’re the smartest kid in school, or live in the nicest house on the block.  If we’re depleted of our joy, then even those blessings are drudgery for us.  Job was right about that, he’s right about a lot of things, and we would do well to read him closely.

    So what do we do with this?  How do we make our life less of a drudgery, more spiritual, more connected with Jesus the source and summit of our faith and the source of the energy we need to make our world what it needs to be?  Well, I don’t know that I can give you a recipe.  But I will make some suggestions, and you are free to do with them what you will.

    First, make a commitment.  You’ll never do it if you don’t make a commitment right here and now.  So make that part of your offertory today.  As the gifts are being collected, offer a gift of commitment to spiritual growth as a gift to God and yourself.

    Don’t the commitment a huge one right away.  Many times people will tell me, “Father, I’ve made a commitment to start spending an hour in prayer every night before bed.”  They may certainly make that commitment, but there is no way they’ll live it.  Forget an hour – I mean it.  If you’re starting from zero, give yourself five minutes.  Or even two minutes if that’s all you can do.  Either before your feet hit the ground in the morning, or right before you close your eyes in sleep at the end of the day.  Then let that amount of time grow as the Spirit prompts you.

    Make prayer a part of it.  You have to connect with the Lord, and prayer is the way to do that.  But make it the kind of prayer you can live with.  You don’t need to read a book of the Bible every night before bed, maybe a few verses is what you can do.  If you don’t like to pray the rosary, then don’t promise to do that.  (And I’m not suggesting that you don’t pray the rosary, by the way, I think it’s a very good prayer, and I myself like it, but if it doesn’t work for you then it’s not prayer at all.)  Pray in a way that makes sense to you.

    Make quiet a part of it.  Quiet is the part of prayer when we can hear the voice of God or notice the prompting of the Spirit or even just calm things down for five minutes.  Turn off your cell phone (now would be a good time for that, by the way, if you haven’t already), close the door, it’s just five minutes and you and God deserve that quiet time.  You might not hear anything the first 50 times you do this, but you will, when the time is right, when you’ve learned to really listen.

    If you mess up and miss a day, don’t beat yourself up.  Just give it a shot again tomorrow.  Eventually, you will find, I guarantee, that you cannot live without this time and you’ll not be able to close your eyes in sleep until you’ve done it.

    Be grateful.  Thank God for the two minutes of quiet, or the hour, or whatever it is.  Take note of the blessings that come from it.  Know that all of it is a gift from God and is meant to make your life more powerful and beautiful.

    Lent is coming up in a few short weeks.  That’s a good time to recommit ourselves to receiving the gifts God has for us by spending time in prayer.  Some of the energy for doing that has to come from us, we have to make a commitment to God in some way.  But the rest of it will come from God, this God who knows how important it is for us to steal away for a few minutes, even when everyone is looking for us, before we get up and go on to preach in the nearby villages, or take the kids to soccer, or get to the next business meeting, or come to a meeting at church, or whatever the next thing is that’s in store for us.

    Our lives are complicated and busy, busy, busy.  But, as the Psalmist says, our Lord longs to heal all of us who are brokenhearted, if only we give him a minute or two to do it.

  • Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

    If I put my mind to it, I suppose I could think of dozens of times when someone with more wisdom than I told me something I wasn’t willing to hear.  Had I been open to those messages, things would have turned out differently – better, maybe – than they did.  How often have we been unwilling to listen to parents, teachers, or others in authority?  How often have we refused to listen to them because we were sure of our own wisdom?  This is not the model God has for our lives.  This is the real reason, I think, for the fourth commandment: honor your father and your mother.

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us, “The fourth commandment is addressed expressly to children in their relationship to their father and mother, because this relationship is the most universal. It likewise concerns the ties of kinship between members of the extended family. It requires honor, affection, and gratitude toward elders and ancestors. Finally, it extends to the duties of pupils to teachers, employees to employers, subordinates to leaders, citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern it.

    “This commandment includes and presupposes the duties of parents, instructors, teachers, leaders, magistrates, those who govern, all who exercise authority over others or over a community of persons.” (CCC, 2199)  The fourth commandment recognizes that God speaks to us through others, and we have a duty to listen to that voice.  St. Paul reminds us that this commandment carries with it a promise of blessing: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16)

    “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

    In today’s first reading, Moses promises that God would send a prophet like himself and the people would listen to that prophet.  We know that God raised up prophets all through the history of the people of Israel.  The Old Testament gives us the words of some of those prophets, and each of them spoke not on their own authority, but spoke the words of God himself.  They would begin their prophesies with the words “Thus says the Lord…”

    But we know that in the fullness of time, God raised up Jesus to be the fulfillment of prophecy and the answer to every longing of the human heart.  The words Jesus spoke were words of authority.  He didn’t need to say “thus says the Lord…”  Instead Jesus would say, “I say to you…”

    Today’s Gospel shows us a little vignette about the teachings of Jesus.  He is teaching in the synagogue and people are impressed with what he says.  But to underscore it all perhaps, Jesus performs and exorcism.  Interestingly enough, the unclean spirit knows who Jesus is – it says, “I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”  I think it’s intensely interesting that the unclean spirits recognize Jesus right away. That’s not always true of the people in Jesus’ time, particularly not true of the religious leaders of the day.  And, honestly, it’s not always true of us, is it?  How slow we can be to recognize and hear what Jesus is saying to us.

    “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

    These words that I have been quoting from today’s Psalm response are loaded with meaning.  I want to look at it in two parts.  First, “If today you hear his voice…”  Now, if we’re not really careful, we could come away from that thinking that God doesn’t speak to us very often.  It’s almost as if we have to be constantly on the lookout for some word of God that may come once in a blue moon.  But that’s not it at all.  I am totally convinced that God is speaking to us all the time.  I often use the example of a radio program.  The radio station is broadcasting 24/7, but if we don’t have a radio turned on, we don’t hear it.  But just because we don’t hear it doesn’t mean there’s no broadcast, right?  We’re just not tuned in.  I think that God speaks to us all the time, and the “if” part of the Psalmist’s words refers to the fickleness of the human heart, not the fickleness of God’s revelation to us.  We have to tune in if we are to hear the word of God today.

    And why would we choose not to tune in?  Maybe it’s because we’re tired and cannot hear just one more piece of advice.  Or perhaps we are busy and don’t have time to make to hear God’s word and act on it.  Or, we may even be so convinced of our own wisdom, that in our pride we block out the voice of God however it may come to us.  The fathers and mothers of the church have long written that this is the greatest sin that one could ever commit.  We might think of lots of things that seem worse, but in the big picture, they don’t even come close not hearing the word of God.  When we think that we can handle everything on our own, when we become God for ourselves, we put ourselves beyond the reach of God’s mercy in ways that we might never be able to heal.  God forbid that we would choose not to hear his voice.

    The second part of the Psalmist’s prayer is “harden not your hearts.”  Hearing the word of God obviously requires a response.  I suppose that upon hearing God’s word, one could simply ignore it and keep on living their lives the way they’re doing it and have been doing it all along.  Lots of people do that, in fact.  But even this “non-response” is a response to God’s word – in fact it’s a rejection of it.  It’s the sin of pride that says we’re too busy to hear God’s word, too exhausted to consider it, or too sure of our own wisdom to need it.  This is what it means to harden our hearts; this is the sinful response I spoke of earlier.

    But for the disciple, the believer, this non-response is not an option.  Hearing the word of God changes us, it brings us along the path of our spiritual life, closer to God.  Maybe God’s word will require a big change in our lives, something like a career change, or taking on our true vocation, or committing to a new ministry at church.  God does call us in those ways at times.  But sometimes God’s word is less momentous, more of a correction or a gentle nudge in a different direction.  Maybe it’s the moment that helps us to realize we’ve sinned.  Or perhaps an inspiration to offer a kindness to another person, or pick up the Scriptures and read them, or even just that moment that we think of someone in our lives and feel like they need our prayers right now.  All of these are changes for us, and help bring us closer to Jesus.

    And the truth is, day in and day out, we’re going to take a couple steps forward, and then maybe a step back.  Sin is the obstacle to truly hearing the voice of God and not hardening our hearts.  But it’s grace that keeps us on the path, encourages us to keep those radios tuned in, listening for the word of God and accepting that word with softened hearts and willing spirits.

    “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “For he who made the promise is trustworthy.”

    Brothers and sisters in Christ, if these are the only words we take from this holy place today, we’re doing pretty well.  The essence of our faith is based on this rock-solid statement from the writer of Hebrews: “For he who made the promise is trustworthy.”  That’s true, of course, and I think we can all agree with it on the intellectual level.  But people of faith have to go deeper than that; we have to be people whose living is wrapped up in the truth of that statement: “For he who made the promise is trustworthy.”

    If we really believe that, then nothing should ever stop our witness.  We should not be stopped because we think we don’t have the words, or the talents to be a witness for the faith.  That doesn’t stop us because God has promised to give us the words and whatever else we need in those moments, and he is trustworthy.  We should not be stopped because we are afraid of commitment, because God has promised us a life that is better than anything we can imagine if we but take up our cross and follow him.  And he is trustworthy.  None of our objections or insecurities should stop our discipleship, our living for Christ, because God has promised to great things in us.  And he is trustworthy.

    And so we place our lamps on the lampstand, unafraid of the watching world looking to us, because we’re not shining our own light but rather Christ’s.  We encourage each other in faith and good works because we have the promise of our trustworthy God to take us wherever we need to go.