Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Prayer

  • Monday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    You know, every time we hear this story about the widow’s mite, the story is equated with the call to stewardship. That’s the classic explanation of the text. And there’s nothing wrong with that explanation. I might even go so far as to preach it that way myself on occasion. But honestly, I don’t think the story about the widow’s mite is about stewardship at all. Yes, it’s about treasure and giving and all of that. But what kind of treasure? Giving what?

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

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

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

  • Our Lord Jesus Christ the King

    Our Lord Jesus Christ the King

    Today’s readings

    ChristTheKingI have to admit that this solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King is a funny feast with which to end our Church year. First of all, we Americans don’t get the whole king thing. The monarchical top-down method of government is not what we have had as our heritage for over two centuries, so the idea of kingship is pretty foreign to us. Secondly, and I’m speaking objectively here, even if we had a king, the king we are presented with in the Liturgy of the Word today, and over the last couple of Sundays has not really been the kind of king we might want to follow. Over the last couple of Sundays, Jesus has warned us that we will have suffering in the world, so we know we cannot rely on our king to make that suffering go away. And today, here is our king, hanging on a cross between two hardened criminals. That one of them thinks to ask Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom is almost laughable, but, well, there it is. There is our king. This feast leaves us on the very last Sunday of the Church year with more questions than it can ever possibly answer.

    But only if we’ve been napping this entire liturgical year. Because Jesus has been very clear from the beginning as to what kind of king he would be and what his kingdom might look like.

    A king who has been pre-ordained from birth would arrive with great fanfare and be born amidst opulence. But to the casual observer that wasn’t true of Jesus. Oh, we know that he was foretold by an angel and that kings bowed down to worship him and shower him with gifts. We know all the prophecies that pointed to his birth. We know of Herod’s jealousy that led to the slaughter of the innocents. We know that stuff. But to the average person in first century Palestine, well, his birth went pretty much unnoticed.

    And even when people started noticing his ministry when he came of age, they were pretty disappointed. “Who do you say that I am?” is the question Jesus asks Peter. Peter acknowledges that he is the anointed one, the Christ. But right on the heels of that very revelation, Jesus emphasizes that the Anointed One must suffer and die in order to bring his kingship to birth. Peter’s reaction is predictable. Oh no, Lord, that can’t be right. Don’t even say such a thing! But Jesus is the one who came not to be served but to serve, and identifies himself right from the beginning as the Suffering Servant of which Isaiah speaks.

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

    So it’s easy to see why the Jews might not have noticed that this one was their king. It’s easy enough to even see why they would have chosen to ignore his kingship. But we can’t miss it: we have heard the Word proclaimed all year long and we know that this is the way that God chose to save the world. There are times, of course, when we could do with a bit more opulence and certainly a lot less suffering. But Jesus is the king of our reality, not of our fantasy, and so he is not ashamed to herald the cross as the gateway to the kingdom and the instrument of our salvation.

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

    And he holds it all together with a strength we could not possibly imagine, opening the way to a kingdom that goes beyond all our imaginings. I want you to listen very closely to the preface to the Eucharistic Prayer today because it describes a kingdom we all have to be hungry for: “a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.” That’s a kingdom of mind-boggling greatness, brothers and sisters in Christ, a kingdom no other ruler could ever hope to promise you.

    On our baptism day, we were anointed with the sacred Chrism oil, an oil that has almost the same name as Christ, which means “Anointed One.” If you’ve been to a baptism or Confirmation recently, you’ll know that the Chrism oil is the only one of the three holy oils to have a fragrance, because it is intended to be the fragrance of Christ. Just as Christ himself was anointed priest, prophet and king, so we too were anointed in that same way. What this means for us today is that just as Christ had to suffer, so we too will have to suffer in this life. But just as Christ was intended for the glory of the Kingdom, so we too have that same destiny, if we but join our lives to his and follow his way.

    That means, of course, we have to go down the ugly way, through the gateway of the cross. In this Kingdom there is no glory without passing through the way of suffering. There is no cheap and easy grace. But there is grace, a grace that walks with us through the hard times and leads us to the joy of the kingdom of truth and life, the kingdom of holiness and grace, the kingdom of justice, love and peace. Our home here on earth is but a temporary dwelling. Our true home is in that kingdom.

    The religious leaders in Jesus day never figured this out. They couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t fathom it. But the good thief realized all of this at the very last minute, practically as he was taking his dying breath. His last words of prayer might be our very own words today. “Jesus remember me,” he says, “when you come into your kingdom.”

  • Friday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Well, with Thanksgiving yesterday, we’ve taken a bit of a break from the readings we have had all week from the book of Maccabees. Today we rejoin the story but it seems things are quite different. On Monday, we heard about King Antiochus Epiphanes and his repulsive plan to blot out the Jewish way of life, with all of its traditions and laws, and with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in favor of making alliance with the Gentiles and observing their base way of life and worshiping their many gods. On Tuesday and Wednesday, upright Jews are choosing death rather than give in to the demands that they eat pork and offer sacrifice to these gods. And today, there is great rejoicing. So what have we missed?

    What we missed was Thursday’s story about Mattathias and his sons, brave men who were filled with zeal for the law and for God. They put to death those who gave in to the demands of the Gentiles and they waged war on their oppressors. They were so successful that Judas and his brothers are able to celebrate victory today. Today, right on the heels of Thanksgiving, we see a thanksgiving celebration of another kind.

    All week long, the message we were getting was that there is something more. Maybe eating a little pork, or tossing a few grains of incense on a coal in worship of an alien god would save one’s life, but upright Jews like Eleazar, and the Maccabean brothers insisted that that life was not a life worth living. The something more to life is our relationship with God, and living without God is not really living at all. Living without God divorces us from who we are and forces us to live in a vacuum.

    Today we can celebrate that our identity as children of God is worth fighting for, or even dying for. We give thanks with Judas and his brothers that God has called us to be his children, that he will not abandon us, and that he gives us the grace not to abandon him and abandon who we are. God is faithful and sovereign and if we persevere, we can rededicate the Temple of our lives to the God who made us and gave us life.

  • For the Beauty of the Earth

    For the Beauty of the Earth

    For the Beauty of the Earth, arr. John Rutter

  • Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Well, the story we started to hear in yesterday’s first reading about Israel has festered a bit. You may remember yesterday that king Antiochus Epiphanes began to lead the people to follow the ways of the Gentiles: covering over their circumcision, attending schools in the Gentile way of life, abandoning the holy laws. Today it’s become ugly. Eleazar the scribe, in his nineties, is being forced to eat pork in violation of the law. When he refuses to do so, some of those who know and respect him urge him to pretend to eat it so as to escape punishment.

    But Eleazar is a man of wisdom, and he knows that if he pretends to violate the law to save his life, he will be leading others astray. Those of lesser years than he would be led to scandal and sin because of him. He may save his life, but theirs would be forever ruined on his account.

    What we are hearing in the book of Maccabees these days is that there is something more important than our own lives. Life is sacred and a wonderful gift, but it is completely meaningless if we live it at the cost of our spiritual lives. And when it comes right down to it, is that really living at all?

    Martyrs throughout the ages have given witness to the fact that there is something more, that this life is not all we have. For Eleazar it was the law. For Christian martyrs it is Jesus Christ. But it is always, always about God who made us for himself, who created us that we might live on this earth, but also live forever with him.

  • Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Terrible affliction was upon Israel. That’s what we’re told in today’s first reading. Why? Well, because they forgot they had a God who could take care of them. Because they were afflicted by the foreign occupation, they thought the best way to overcome that was by making alliance with their persecutors rather than remembering that God was faithful and would save them.

    Look at what they did. They introduced the way of living of the Gentiles. In days gone by, they would have thought such a thing completely repulsive. They became atheists in a sense: they rejected God completely. The gymnasium they erected wasn’t for sport, it was for learning. In those days a gymnasium was a kind of school that taught a complete way of life, one very different from the one God had laid out for them. They covered over the mark of their circumcision. The sign that they belonged to God was essentially blotted out so that they would know longer be known as God’s people. Then the evil Antiochus Epiphanes made the transformation complete by giving the Temple over to the worship of pagan gods. Israel’s crisis of faith caused them to reject the God who had loved them into creation.

    The point is, when life starts oppressing us and everything seems like it is going wrong, there are two choices for people of faith. One is the way Israel went under Antiochus Epiphanes. The other is the way of the blind beggar in today’s Gospel who humbly cried out: “Son of David, have pity on me” and “Lord, please let me see.” Please God let us all be able to see the big picture, the triumph of our God over the foe, the relief our hearts have longed for.

    The lament of the Psalmist today is the way the disciple chooses: “Indignation seizes me because of the wicked who forsake your law. Though the snares of the wicked are twined about me, your law I have not forgotten.”

  • Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever felt like the world was coming to an end? Because that’s just exactly how the original readers of Luke’s Gospel felt. The glorious Temple of Jerusalem, once stately and glimmering white and gold in the sunlight, now lay in ruins. Jerusalem was no more, and a world ended with it.

    But we modern hearers can’t possibly find this feeling foreign. We often feel, I think, like the world has come to an end. We all must deal with losses and endings each day. Family, friends and our communities experience various forms of dying and they are never easy. Cancer strikes down a former athlete; a marriage breaks up; an injury makes it impossible to keep a job; aging diminishes a once-vibrant person. And more. Our once proud church seems irrevocably damaged by scandal; our country is involved in a war that will affect generations to come; seeming low interest home mortgages become the cause for struggling families to lose the homes they worked long and hard to own.

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

    A popular Christian song speaks of being in the midst of the storm, amidst what seems like the end of the world. The refrain gives words that resonate with Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel:

    I’ll praise You in this storm
    And I will lift my hands
    For You are who You are
    No matter where I am
    Every tear I’ve cried
    You hold in Your hand
    You never left my side
    And though my heart is torn
    I will praise You in this storm
    (Casting Crowns, “Praise You in This Storm”)

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

  • Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever thought how depressing life would be if this is all there was? Do you know people who would say that they believe there is nothing else after this life? Do you feel sorry for them? These questions of life and death and last things and life after the last things are what’s going on in the Church’s mind and imagination in these last days of the Church year. Last week, we celebrated our saints, those people who have fought the good fight and who have joined themselves to Christ in his overcoming of sin and death. And we mourned our dead, those souls who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and whose absence in our lives leaves a great hole that cannot seem to be filled up.

    And it’s no wonder these questions grab us in these waning days of the year. The trees are losing their foliage. The daylight hours are getting shorter. The air is a bit colder. We can sense there is a change approaching, and perhaps it isn’t one that we look forward to. Even with the festive atmosphere of the upcoming Christmas holidays, or perhaps even because of that, many of us feel depressed or blasé, and the festivity of the holiday season only serves to highlight it for us. Please God, let there be something more.

    Fundamentally, we human beings need to make connections. We want life, we want light, we want peace, we want love. And because we want all these things, we know we are alive. We attempt, don’t we, to fill them up as best we can. We hope that our attempts are healthy, but sometimes we find ourselves stuck and attempt to fill our desires with things that are well, just shoddy. We anesthetize ourselves with drugs or alcohol. We enter into relationships that are unhealthy. We work ourselves to death. We distance ourselves from loved ones. We sin.

    And it’s easy for us to console ourselves when we accept these shoddy ways of filling our desires. Hey, we’re only human, right? Well, that’s what we tell ourselves. And that would be helpful except for the fact that sin isn’t human at all. Filling our desires so poorly is the very least human thing we can do. Our desires aren’t wrong; it is not wrong to want something more. Filling that up with something less is the problem.

    The Sadducees had no idea, but that’s exactly what they were doing. The Sadducees, we are told, were a group of religious authorities that taught there was no resurrection. I had a professor in seminary that told us that that is why they were sad, you see. It’s a bad joke but I never forgot what the Sadducees were about! So these Sadducees come to Jesus and seem to have an earnest question. They speak of a woman seven times widowed and wonder whose wife she will be in the resurrection of the dead. Except that their question wasn’t earnest at all. Clearly they were out to discredit Jesus, even embarrass him. So you think there will be a resurrection, they say, well then, what about this?

    The Sadducees didn’t get it when it came to the resurrection, and they weren’t willing to open their minds to any kind of new possibility. If what Jesus said didn’t fit what they believed, then it absolutely must be wrong. They were filling their desires with the sin of pride instead of the possibility of eternal life. What a horrible, shoddy way to fill up their desires!

    But swing that around and look at the seven brothers in the first reading. All they would have to do was eat a little pork and they could have lived. Yet they patently refused to do so. One by one, they are tortured and killed. Why would they have let themselves be treated that way? All they had to do was eat some pork, for heaven’s sake; surely God would forgive them, right? But listen to what the first brother says: “You are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever. It is for his laws that we are dying.” These brothers and their mother realized that there was something greater, something more. They knew their desire could never be filled up with a little pork, or the shoddy life that would come about as a result of giving up their beliefs. What a stark contrast they are to the prideful Sadducees!

    St. Paul underscores this today in his letter to the Thessalonians. Listen to his opening instruction again:

    May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father,
    who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement
    and good hope through his grace,
    encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.

    There is something more, St. Paul tells us. There is something that will fill up our desires once and for all, and that something is Jesus Christ. It’s not going to be our pride, boasting of our elaborate wisdom or ability to take care of ourselves. It’s not going to be a little pork, or giving in to whatever temptation comes our way to take us off the path. It’s not going to be alcohol, or drugs, or unhealthy relationships or Dr. Phil or Oprah or anyone else. It’s only going to be Jesus, only Jesus who will fill up the desires that touch us to the core of who we are.

    The Church in these waning days of the Church year would never deny that there is suffering in the world. She will not even allow us to tie up all the loose ends neatly so that we can march our way into the kingdom. But she will encourage us to open up our desires to be filled with our Savior who comes not to make our suffering go away, but instead to fill it up with his presence. Jesus tells us as much in another place: “In this world you will have suffering.” But suffering isn’t all there is. There is something more, and we can expect to be filled up with it when we realize that the fit for the hole we have in our hearts is Jesus Christ.

    Our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. To him all are alive. So in these last days of the year, if we find ourselves desiring peace, desiring wholeness, desiring comfort, desiring love, desiring fulfillment, or desiring anything else, that’s okay. Because what we’re really desiring is Christ, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

  • Monday of the Thrity-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thrity-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
    How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!

    How often would we like to figure out what’s going on in God’s mind? Wouldn’t it be great to just be able to see the big picture as God sees it so that we can always do the right thing? But that’s just the point. The meaning of everything isn’t ours to know. God gives us what we need in order to follow him. If we would just open up our hearts and minds we could see what we need to see in order to be good disciples. But often we forget the grace we have been given and ignore what’s right in front of us in order to see what we want to see.

    For who has known the mind of the Lord
    or who has been his counselor?
    Or who has given him anything
    that he may be repaid?

    I often wonder if we really could see the whole big picture if we were more obedient to God’s will. Maybe it’s our disobedience, and not God, that keeps us from seeing everything as it truly is.

    When it comes down to it, though, God is God and we are not. That is what St. Paul has been trying to tell us these past couple of weeks as we’ve been reading from his letter to the Romans. We have been disobedient and cannot be obedient apart from God’s grace. Thanks be to God, he has poured out his grace and mercy upon us. We cannot see what God wants us to see apart from God’s grace. Thanks be to God, he gives us his vision when we ask for it and are disposed to receive it.

    We cannot give anything to God that he has not already given us. Our desire to thank him is itself a gift from God – it says that in today’s preface to the Eucharistic Prayer. God made us for relationship with him. We are called to be obedient to God’s grace and mercy that we might be able to see ourselves, others, and the whole world as it really is, and to know God’s plan for our lives. The Psalmist certainly received what he asked for today, and we can too: Lord, in your great love, answer me.

  • All Souls: The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed

    All Souls: The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed

    Readings: Wisdom 3:1-9 | Revelation 21:1-7 | Matthew 25:31-40

    0871 Jesus resurrection christian clipartWhen I celebrated this Liturgy last year, the homily I gave was pretty straightforward. It was theologically accurate and liturgically sound. This year, the experience is a little different for me, and so will the homily be different. Many of you know that this past May, my Dad died, and the experience of grieving his loss has helped me to personalize my theology and my pastoral care, and my preaching. Today I hope you don't mind if I reminisce a bit about my Dad, because I do it so that perhaps it may touch something in you to help you in your grieving and give you hope in your sorrows.

    Lots of things remind me about Dad. Whenever I was staying at the house overnight, and I'd get up in the morning to go shower, I would pass by his room and he would still be in bed. But he'd be awake, and would always say "good morning." I miss those good mornings now. Just the other day, Mom and I were out staining the deck. When we were getting started, I was searching the garage for some painting supplies. When I got frustrated and couldn't find what I was looking for, I said "okay Dad, where did you put it?" And the next drawer I opened had all the things I needed, right where he left them. I couldn't help but smile and say "thanks" because Dad was the only one who knew where anything was in that garage. Not that it was messy; it was very organized, but he alone knew the scheme!

    In the days and weeks and months since May, my family has gathered to celebrate many events – as best we could. I remember on Mother's Day, just after Dad died, we gathered at my aunt's house and I celebrated Mass there. When we were getting ready, I thought to myself, "Oh wait, we can't start yet … somebody's missing." As I looked around, I realized just exactly who we were missing. It's times like that that we go on with a bit of a heavy heart. We have told the stories, and laughed about the memories. That has helped some, but there's still a hole in our hearts.

    These days, remembering is hard for all of us I think. As we come close to the first holidays without our loved ones, we will miss celebrating with them. There will be an empty place at the table, an extra Christmas stocking, nobody to help find the burnt out light bulb on the Christmas lights that keeps the whole string from working. We feel grief more intensely at the holidays, because the world is rejoicing, but we are hurting. I remember a time visiting a gift store in Glen Ellyn years ago, just after one of my grandmothers died. It was all decked out for Christmas and looked so very homey. I was overcome with a wave of depression that socked me from out of nowhere. I had no idea what that was about, and I had to leave in a hurry. Later, I realized that it was about grieving my grandmother.

    And so I think it is the Church's great wisdom that has us stop and celebrate All Souls Day before the holidays are upon us. Because we are a people who believe that there is hope in the midst of sorrow, joy in the midst of pain, resurrection that follows death, and love that survives the grave and leads us to the one who made us for himself. There has to be something that gets us through all these hard times, and I think the Church gives us that something today.

    In the Liturgy, the words of hope that we find lead us back to the Cross and Resurrection. Death is not the end. Love does not come to an end at the grave. As the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer will tell us today: "Lord, for your faithful people, life is changed, not ended. When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death, we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven." Our loved ones who have been people of faith have been made new by passing through the gates of death. Their happiness is our hope; the grace and blessing that they now share will one day be ours.

    But I will acknowledge that even that glimmer of hope doesn't erase all the pain. We are left with tears and loneliness, and that empty place at the table. But sadness and pain absolutely do not last forever, because death and sin have been ultimately defeated by the blood of Christ. We can hope in the day that our hearts will be healed, and we will be reunited with our loved ones forever, in the kingdom that knows no end. The Eucharistic Prayer itself will tell us tonight that there will come a day when "every tear will be wiped away. On that day, we shall see you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you and praise you for ever through Christ our Lord, from whom all good things come."

    Perhaps sometimes it feels like it would have been better not to have loved at all, because then maybe the pain wouldn't be so great. We know that's not true. Sadness and pain are temporary. Love is eternal. As the Church's Vigil for the Deceased tells us, "all the ties of friendship and affection which knit us as one throughout our lives do not unravel with death." We know that death only separates us for a short time, and even though there is a hole in our heart, the sadness that we feel is way better than never having loved at all, never having had our loved ones in our lives at all.

    The pain doesn't just go away. There is no time when grief is "over." I miss Dad in many ways, all the time. You miss your loved ones in exactly the same way. There are times when our grief overwhelms us, comes at us out of nowhere. But many are the times when our memories provide us healing and joy. My nephew had a very close relationship with Dad, who he called "Boppy." He often dreamed of Dad and said to his mom, my sister, a week or so ago, "I'm sad because I didn't dream of Boppy last night. I like to dream about Boppy." Our dreams, our memories are gifts from our God who insists that we always know that we are loved. Sometimes it hurts, but ultimately it heals. Sadness is temporary. Love is eternal.

    Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

    May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.