Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Prayer

  • The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time [Cycle C]

    The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time [Cycle C]

    Today’s readings

    The past two weekends, we have had the first reading come from the book of the prophet Amos.  I love Amos.  He doesn’t mince words, and you can usually tell what he’s getting at right away.  Today, though, I think it’s a little harder to understand what he means.  The line that jumps out at me is the line, “Improvising to the music of the harp, like David, they devise their own accompaniment.”  It almost sounds like a good thing.  David, of course, was a wonderful musician, so why would it be a bad thing that they are able to devise their own accompaniments, like David did?

    Well, let me tell you a story from my own life that might shed some light on it.  This, too, is a musical analogy.  Back when I was in my early twenties, I was taking voice lessons. I had a really good teacher who taught me all the mechanics of voice as well as some music theory. He also tried to teach me how to play piano, but that never took. But I have to admit, sometimes I took things for granted and let my practicing slide. And that’s exactly what I had been doing that for a couple of weeks at one point.  The lesson right after that went okay, but I have to admit I didn’t really learn anything because I hadn’t put anything into it. At the end of the lesson, we sat down and talked for a while. Mostly my teacher was talking and I was getting an earful. But I thought he was praising me for my abilities and progress – the words he used were very positive and I left feeling really good about myself. But afterward, while I was driving home, I started to feel the kick in the pants that the talk really was. I got the message, loud and clear.

    I think that’s what Amos is doing here.  Listen to that line again: “Improvising to the music of the harp, like David, they devise their own accompaniment.” Again, it almost sounds like a good thing, but it isn’t at all. David could devise his own accompaniment, because he was singing those Psalms with the voice of God. But if everyone in our choir devised their own accompaniment, we’d have a cacophony. So here Amos is making the point that devising their own accompaniment meant that they listened to what they wanted to hear, not what God was telling them.  They did whatever they wanted to do, because it seemed like God was blessing them.  It’s kind of like the expression, “she dances to her own music.” It’s not a compliment at all.

    The rich man in today’s Gospel devised his own accompaniment too. He ignored poor Lazarus every single day of his life. He knew Lazarus’s need, and maybe he even thought he’d get around to helping Lazarus one day. Or maybe he thought, “What good can I do, I’m just one person?” Perhaps he thought, “If I give him something to eat, what good will that do, he’ll just be hungry tomorrow.” He probably came up with all kinds of excuses about why he couldn’t help Lazarus right here and right now. He was devising his own accompaniment.

    And we all know the story about the rich man. Someday becomes never. It’s eventually too late: poor Lazarus dies and goes to be with Father Abraham. But in an ironic twist of fate, the rich man also dies, presumably soon after. But it seems that Lazarus and the rich man end up in different places, doesn’t it? The rich man learns that devising one’s own accompaniment does not help one to sing a hymn of praise to the Lord, and his choice in life becomes his choice in the life to come. If one doesn’t choose to praise God in life, one won’t have that option in the life to come. Devising our own accompaniment comes with drastic consequences.

    Even in death, the rich man is devising his own accompaniment.  Even now, he does not see Lazarus as anything more than a messenger to do his own bidding.  “Father Abraham,” he cries out, “have pity on me.  Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.”  When he learns that’s not possible, he tries another tack:  “Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.”  He never sees Lazarus as a brother, and that’s why they’re in different places.  That’s why there is that great chasm that Father Abraham talked about between them – the rich man built it!  Devising our own accompaniment means that we separate ourselves from the community, we literally excommunicate ourselves.

    One of the principles of Catholic social teaching is solidarity with the poor and needy.  This was a topic that the prophets, like Amos, preached about all the time. Solidarity with the poor is the teaching that says we need to be one with our brothers and sisters, and not ignore their presence among us. I became very aware of this as I walked around downtown Chicago one time. I had come with some money to give to the poor. But on the train ride home, I realize that I had just quickly given some of them some money, and never really looked at any of them. They were my brothers and sisters, and I didn’t take the time to look them in the eye. Solidarity calls me – calls all of us – to do just that. We have to step out of that universe that we have set in motion around us and realize that Christ is present in each person God puts in our path. We have to step out of our own cacophony where we have devised our own accompaniments and step into the symphony that God has set in motion. We have to be one with all people.

    God knows about this principle of solidarity. Because God holds it so dear, he sent his only Son to take on flesh – our flesh – so that he could live in solidarity with us – all of us who are poor and needy in our sins. He shared in all of our joys and sorrows, and reaffirmed that human life was good. Life was made good at creation and remains good to this day. But if God could take on flesh in solidarity with us, then we must take on the burdens of our brothers and sisters and live in solidarity with them.  We must abandon our own accompaniments and sing the song of our brothers and sisters in need.

    In our second reading today, St. Paul tells us to “pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. Compete well for the faith. Lay hold of eternal life, to which you were called when you made the noble confession in the presence of many witnesses.” We have to be serious about living our faith and proclaiming the Gospel in everything that we do. In solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters, we must sing to God’s own accompaniment and join in the wonderful symphony that is the heavenly worship.

  • Saturday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the most important spiritual tools is that of mindfulness.  You could translate that as a kind of being in the moment; being aware of what is happening, what God is doing here an now.  This is a difficult concept for us modern people to get, because we fly from one thing to another so quickly, we hardly give things a moment to register.  Before we can focus on what’s happening around us, our cell phone rings, or the television takes us to a different place and time, or it’s time to herd the kids into the car and take them to whatever the next thing is.

    Mindfulness requires stillness, quiet and focus, and those things come to us in rather short supply.  As frustrating as this may be for us, we find the first disciples today in pretty much the same boat.  They don’t have the distractions of modern convenience, of course, but they were seeing incredible things from Jesus: miracles, healings, casting out demons, incredible words at war with the Scribes and Pharisees, walking on water, transfiguration on the mountain, all these just to name a few.  Their minds had to be reeling trying to figure out what to make of it all.  They hardly had time to process one thing before the next thing happened.

    To them, and to us, Jesus says in the gospel today: “Pay attention.”  He wants them to know that the cross stands ready for him, that he will have to suffer and die.  We too, have to live in the shadow of the cross: we will have our own suffering, our own pain and sadness.  None of us gets to the resurrection without the cross – Jesus didn’t, the disciples didn’t, and we won’t either.  And so it would serve us well to be mindful, to pay attention, to what is happening in the present moment, to what God is doing now.  If we miss that, the cross will overwhelm us and crush us in despair.  But if we are mindful of God’s presence even in suffering, even in the shadow of the cross, then we will never be crushed under the weight of the cross, because we will be buoyed up by the hope of resurrection.

  • Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I like to be on time for things.  It bugs me when people are late.  I was raised to be punctual, so I am very aware of time.  The author of Ecclesiastes is aware of time today also, but in a slightly different way.  He knows that there is a time and a place for everything; that God is doing something different now than he was before.  It is our task not just to be merely punctual in observing these times and seasons, but more so to be mindful of them.  So often we fly from one thing to the next, hardly giving anyone or anything a second thought.  The wisdom writer would have us be mindful, would have us be open to what God is doing in this moment, and to respond accordingly.  What is God doing in your life, right now?

  • Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I have to tell you, today’s gospel reading gives me a little bit of a panic attack deep down inside!  I tend to over-pack, and really, over-prepare for everything.  Even though I was never a boy scout, the whole idea of being prepared just really resonates with me.  And so when Jesus says we shouldn’t have a walking stick, food, money or a second tunic, well it’s almost hard for me to breathe!  But the invitation is a good one, especially for those of us who tend to over-prepare.  We are being invited to trust God first and foremost.  If we accept that invitation, think of what great things God will be able to do in us and through us!

  • The Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The prophet Amos didn’t mince any words when it came to doing what God asked of him.  His central message was that the worship of the people Israel was completely messed up, because they dishonored God in their daily living, in every possible way, at every possible moment. Today’s first reading is evidence enough of what Amos was sent to preach: he details the various ways the rich cheated the poor who came to buy life’s sustenance from them.  And he concludes with the very haunting words: “Never will I forget a thing they have done!”

    I think we should keep Amos’s words in mind as we try to wade through what is, I think, a rather difficult parable to unravel in today’s Gospel.  The steward in the parable seems to be some kind of high-ranking assistant to the rich man.  He has enough authority that he is able to rewrite the deals people had made with the man, such that the rich man would have to honor them.  But apparently he has not been doing his job, because he learns that the rich man is about to fire him.  Much as anyone would do when they learn of that impending crisis, he takes stock of his abilities: he isn’t strong enough for manual labor, and his position has made the prospect of begging too humiliating to bear.

    Given that state of affairs, he knows that he has to start cutting deals with the rich man’s clients so that they will be more likely to help him when he is looking for it after he is fired.  So he basically writes off a large chunk of their debts to the rich man.  Now how he could do that is anyone’s guess.  Some scholars say that he just wrote of the commission he himself would have received for collecting the debt.  Others say that he wrote off the usurious interest the master had been charging.  Since we don’t know the answer, we have to assume that detail was either understood by Jesus’ hearers or simply unimportant to the story itself.

    Now the next statement is difficult for biblical scholars to unravel: “And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.”  Are those words part of the parable?  In other words, did the rich man call the servant dishonest, and if so, was this what was about to get the steward fired?  It doesn’t seem like that is the case.  The Greek word used for “master” here is kyrios, or Lord, which usually refers to Jesus in the gospels.  So it seems like Jesus is the one who is calling the servant dishonest, and that serves to squash the impression that Jesus was commending the steward for his dishonest dealings; clearly that was not the case.

    But having said all that and having waded our way through the strangeness of this parable, the question remains: what is the point?  Certainly Jesus isn’t saying that we should deal deceitfully with others, be they poor or rich.  I think what Jesus wants us to understand is that, in the vast scheme of things, there is something more important than money.  For the steward on the eve of his unemployment, the money owed to his boss was far less important than his ability to live after he was let go.  Perhaps all of this is summed up best by the words that come at the end of the gospel reading: “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

    But what does that even mean?  What is mammon, precisely?  Mammon is avarice, an excessive love for money that treats money as a false god.  We don’t have to tax our imaginations too much to see what mammon might look like today.  It could be spending too many hours at work and not seeing your children grow up.  It could be a covetous desire for the very latest gadget, or the biggest flat-screen television, or the car with all the bells and whistles.  Money, career, gadgets, cars … none of these things are evil in themselves.  When we turn them into a goal that surpasses God such that they become gods in themselves, then we are serving mammon – our lives our way out of whack.

    And usually when things are this far out of whack, someone is paying the price.  It could be our families who are growing up not only with a basically absent parent, but also a skewed idea of what is really important in life.  Or maybe we desire clothing or other goods at the very cheapest prices such that the cost is someone in a foreign land – perhaps even a child – working in a sweatshop hours on end for very little pay so that we can have them.  Our desire for all the shiny gadgets may come at the cost of what they do to the environment, or at the cost of feeding the poor.  Mammon creeps its way into our lives so easily, and we cannot serve both God and mammon.

    So if we’re just here in church for the hour, and we cannot wait to get out of here and get to Best Buy, then we’re as bad as the people trampling the needy in our first reading.  If we leave this place and forget what we’ve been taught, quickly returning to unjust business practices on Monday morning, then we are serving mammon, not God.

    The Catholic image of worship and prayer is summed up in the Latin phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, which loosely-translated means “what we pray, we believe.”  So our vision of worship is that it doesn’t stop when we say “Amen” – our worship goes on into our daily lives.  In fact, when we say, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord” our worship has only just begun, because we only truly worship God when we live the Gospel and put our money where our mouth is.

  • Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel gives us a bit of a glimpse as to how Jesus’ day-to-day ministry worked.  One of the things we certainly notice is the meticulous mention of the women that were among his followers.  In a day where a woman’s participation in anything of a public nature would be totally frowned upon, Jesus reached out to women, and brought them into his ministry.  Certainly the Evangelist would never have mentioned it if it weren’t important to the Gospel itself.

    We come here today for Mass, aware that our God seeks us out in little and big ways every single day.  We too want to be close to him, and respond as did the Twelve, the women, and the “many others.”  We disciples long to be among those who serve our Lord and are caught up in his ministry.

  • Saint John Chrysostom

    Saint John Chrysostom

    Today’s readings

    St. John Chrysostom was known to be a prolific, well-spoken and challenging preacher. The name “Chrysostom” means “golden-mouthed.” He spoke eloquently of the Scriptures, of which he had an extensive understanding, and applied their words to the times of his day. He was known, actually, to often preach for two hours or more! So, in his honor, I thought it appropriate to preach … oh, never mind.

    The emperor schemed to make John the bishop of Constantinople, the capital city, because the he thought he could manipulate John. But he couldn’t. John would often preach against the opulence of the wealthy and the mistreatment of the poor. He deposed bishops who had bribed their way into office. He would only offer a modest meal to those who came to kiss up to the bishop, rather than an opulent table that they had been expecting. He would not accept the pomp and ceremony that afforded him a place above most ranking members of the court.

    So, as you can well imagine, not everyone liked John. Many of his sermons called for concrete steps to share wealth with the poor. The rich did not appreciate hearing the challenging words that John was known to preach. When it came to justice and charity, Saint John acknowledged no double standards. I think his preaching would be intriguing, and certainly challenging, even in our own day.

    What we should get from St. John Chrysostom, is that discipleship has to be imbued with fidelity and integrity. We have to practice what we preach. Saint Paul, in our first reading today, echoes this sentiment of St. John.  He calls the Corinthians to task for having gatherings in which some have so much that they get drunk, while others leave hungry. We should hear that same challenge.  As we go forth from this place, we too have the opportunity to live our faith by giving generously to the poor, and reaching out to those who are marginalized. We have to be those disciples who give lavishly of our personal resources, who forgive from the heart, who avoid judging and love all people deeply. If our living had this kind of integrity, then we could be “golden-mouthed” too, not so much by our words as by our actions.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I’ve heard it said that the only one of the disciples Jesus called that day was Judas Iscariot, and we all know how that worked out.  We don’t know what God considers qualification for discipleship, we just know that somehow, for some reason, we have been called to do whatever it is that we are meant to do in life.  We probably don’t have all the skills necessary to accomplish it, but that’s okay.  If we were able to accomplish everything on our own then we wouldn’t need God, wouldn’t need a Savior.  Thank God that we both need and have him in our lives, and that he has called us all to share in the work of discipleship in some way.

  • The Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary time [C]

    The Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary time [C]

    Today’s readings

    Jesus tells us some things about discipleship today that, quite honestly, I think might make a person think twice about becoming a disciple.  The first two come right at the beginning of the gospel reading: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”  And then, right at the end, he says: “Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”  He’s pretty clear: if we’re not willing to do these things, then we cannot be his disciples.

    How does that make you feel?  Are you willing to hate those closest to you for the sake of the Gospel?  Would you take up your cross, knowing what happened to him when he did it, and come after him?  Think of the things that you have that you love: are you willing to renounce them in order to follow Christ?  Today’s Gospel is incredibly challenging, to say the least.  Maybe I should say it’s incredibly unsettling.  We might find ourselves totally willing to be Jesus’ followers, but at what cost?

    And that’s the point of the parables he tells.  Who is going to build a building without first calculating how much it would cost to build it to be certain there is adequate funding?  Most of us have probably passed by some commercial buildings that started going up, only to be later abandoned, or that took quite a bit of time to build, possibly because the funding dried up.  So we’re not unfamiliar with the metaphor here.  Or if you were a military leader going into battle, don’t you estimate what the adversary is brining to the battle to be sure that you can be victorious?  Bringing it down a notch, think of a coach scouting out the other team to see how they play.

    In any of these situations, it is absolutely necessary to calculate the cost.  Not to do so would be foolish.  The same is true of discipleship.  There is a cost to discipleship.  Those first disciples, almost without exception, paid for it at the cost of their lives.  Preaching in the name of Jesus was a dangerous thing to do, but they calculated the cost and realized it was worth it, and they did die.  Praise God for their faithfulness to the mission despite the cost; had they not been faithful we might not have the faith.

    For us modern disciples, should we choose to follow him, there will be a cost too.  We might not get nailed to a cross as some of those early disciples did and have to pay for it with our lives.  But there will be a cross to bear.  We might have relationships that get in the way.  We might have things that we own that tie us too closely to the world and get in the way of our relationship with Christ.  Those will have to go.  That is the cost for us, and today we’re being asked if we are willing to pay it.

    So how far do we take this?  Do we really have to hate our families?  Do we have to sell everything we own?  Do we have to take up the cross in such a way that we become doormats for those whose views are different from ours?  How much of the cost do we ourselves really need to pay?
    We certainly know that Jesus – who loved his mother and father very much – did not mean that we were to alienate ourselves from our families.  But there may be relationships in our lives that are obstacles to the Gospel.  Maybe we’d gossip less if we didn’t hang out with people who brought that out of us.  That would certainly help us to be better disciples.  Maybe we’re in friendships or casual relationships that lead us to drink too much, or see the wrong kind of movies, or that draw us away from the healthy relationships we have.  Those relationships have to end if we are to follow Christ more fully.  Anything that gets in the way of our relationship with God and our ability to follow him in whatever way he’s called us has to go right now.  Ruthlessly put an end to it now, because otherwise we give up the life to which we are called, the life that is better than even these things that we might enjoy very much.

    Our first reading speaks about God’s wisdom.  It’s so hard for us to understand that our own world most days, let alone understand the things of heaven.  We just don’t have the mind of God.  Our minds are very good, the best on the planet, but they aren’t enough.  Steven Hawking is one of the smartest people in our world right now, but when he talks about religion, he’s an absolute fool.  His current contention that the world doesn’t need a God to create it and run it is absolutely backwards, but that’s another homily.  The point is that we cannot ever understand the things of this world, or the world to come, unless God reveals them.  We have a deep and unquenchable need for his wisdom.  The more of it we have, the more we know that we need it.

    God’s wisdom can help us to put our relationships, our possessions, the cost of discipleship, in proper perspective.  We have to beseech God day and night to give us the wisdom to live life the right way.  If we think we can go without it, we are fools too.  Wisdom is the tool that we are being offered for our discipleship toolbox today; we just have to gratefully accept it.

    Our Liturgy of the Word today reminds us that following the Gospel on our own terms is not possible. The call to discipleship is one that calls us to step out of our comfort zone, leave behind whatever ties us to the world and separates us from God, and follow our Savior wherever he leads us. So if our only sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom of God is maybe getting out of bed and coming to Church on Sunday, then Jesus is telling us today that’s not enough.  It is a good start, but we have to reflect with wisdom on those things that are getting in the way, because it’s time we gave them up.

    As we present our gifts today, God gives us the gift of wisdom.  How we live our lives this week will be the test of the way we’ve put that gift into action.

  • Saturday of the Twenty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The question Saint Paul asks the Corinthians in today’s first reading is a challenging one: what do you have that you have not received?  For us in a society steeped in entitlement, this question rings like an accusation.

    We may be justly proud of what we have learned and achieved and accomplished, because in attaining those things, we have used our gifts to their potential.  However, as Christians, we must never be overly inflated with pride in those things because we must always remember that we achieved them because God gave us the ability and the opportunity.  What do we have that we have not received?  What have we learned that God has not revealed?  What have we accomplished that God has not blessed?

    Very early in my priesthood, I was somewhat embarrassed when people would tell me how much a homily had touched them or how moved they were by the way I celebrated Mass.  I was very conscious of the fact that nothing I had done was done without God’s grace.  A brother priest told me he responded to those things by saying “praise God!” because that acknowledged that it was accomplished with God’s grace.

    Maybe that’s a good lesson for all of us.  When we are complimented for something we’ve done or accomplished, we may well be proud of it.  But we may also well be grateful for all God has done in us to bring us to that point.  In our gratitude and love for God, maybe we can all respond to those compliments, “praise God!”