Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Prayer

  • The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    Today’s readings

    If you’ve ever travelled abroad, to a country where English is not the spoken language, maybe you’ve had this experience.  I travelled to Mexico when I was in seminary to learn Spanish.  The first day I was there, we went to Mass at the local Cathedral.  Even though at that point my Spanish was pretty sketchy, you know, kind of like it is now, still I recognized the Mass.  That’s because we celebrate it in the same way, with the same words – albeit in a different language – everywhere on earth.  In the Eucharist, we are one.  “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”  That’s what St. Paul tells the Corinthians today, and we are meant to hear it as well.  We are called to unity with one another as we gather around the Altar to partake of the one Body of Christ.

    We may express our unity in many ways in the Mass.  We all sing the same songs (although these days, we leave the singing to the cantor!).  We all stand or sit together.  We might all join hands at the Lord’s Prayer.  And those are all okay things, but they are not what unites us.  They put us on a somewhat equal footing, but that can happen in all kinds of gatherings.  The one thing that unites us at this gathering, the experience we have here that we don’t have in any other situation, is the Eucharist.  The Eucharist unites us in the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, where all division must necessarily cease.  The Eucharist is the celebration of our unity par excellence.

    Having said that, there are obvious ways in which we can notice that we are not, in fact, one.  The Eucharist, which is the celebration of our unity, can often remind us in a very stark and disheartening way, of the ways that we remain divided with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  The most obvious of these ways is the way that we Catholics remain divided with our Protestant brothers and sisters, and in fact, they with each other as well.  The proliferation of Christian denominations is something we can soft-petal as “different strokes for different folks,” but is in fact a rather sad reminder that the Church that Jesus founded and intended to be one is in fact fragmented in ways that it seems can only be overcome by a miracle.  In our Creed we profess a Church that is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.”  By “catholic” here, we may indeed mean “universal” but that does not, of course, mean that we are in fact one.

    Another thing that divides all of us from one another is sin.  Mortal sin separates us not only from God, not only from those we have wronged, but also from the Church and all of our brothers and sisters in Christ.  When we have sinned greatly, we are not permitted in good conscience to receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, because we cannot dare to pretend to be one with those from whom we have separated ourselves, through mortal sin.

    I think this point is very notable at this point in our human history.  We have seen in these past weeks the sadness of the division that is caused by the sin of racism.  Blatant disregard for our brothers and sisters of other races is a sin against unity, and therefore a sin against Christ in the Eucharist.  Jesus prayed on the last day of his life on earth that we would all be one, and yet, throughout history, and even to this very day, we continue to find occasions to separate ourselves from one another, to proliferate division through racist thoughts and actions.  We who receive the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity, need to be the catalysts for that very unity, to root out every vestige of racism in our own hearts, and stand with our brothers and sisters of color.  We can’t just stand by and say, well, I’m not racist so I don’t have to deal with that.  We have to be the ones who say it’s not okay, and seek reconciliation with every single person.  If we don’t, we’re mocking the Eucharist, and I think we all know that’s not okay.

    “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him,” Jesus says to us today.  When we remain in him, we also remain united to one another through Christ.  This is what God wants for his Church, so today we must recommit ourselves to unity, real unity.  So if you have not been to Confession in a while, make it a priority to do that in the next week or so that you can be one with us at the Table of the Lord.  And at Communion today, we must all make it our prayer that the many things that divide us might soon melt away so that we can all become one in the real way the Jesus meant for us.

    “I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
    whoever eats this bread will live forever;
    and the bread that I will give
    is my flesh for the life of the world.”

    On this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we pray that every person may one day come to share in the flesh of our Savior, given for the life of the world, and we pray that his great desire might come to pass: that we may be one.

  • Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes God’s blessings can be challenging.  For example, we might not think that those who are meek and those who mourn are blessed.  And we certainly wouldn’t celebrate the blessings of those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, would we?  It’s even more challenging when we remember that the word “blessed” in Scripture could also be translated as “happy.”  Would we think of those people as happy?  Probably not, but God does.

    Elijah the Tishbite might have picked different blessings also, I am sure.  He gets to be the bearer of tidings that there will be drought and resulting famine until he says otherwise.  He then is taken care of by the Lord only by drinking from a little stream, and eating food brought to him by birds as he fled for his life.  His work was important, and he was taken care of, but was it in the way he might like?  Probably not.

    We have the same issue as we live out our Christian discipleship.  We very often have to be bearers of an unpopular message, and trust in God’s providence to deliver us.  We might speak up against abortion or, certainly, importantly in these days, against racism in every single one of its forms.  Not everyone will agree with us and there is a price to be paid for that, in terms of our popularity or even comfort level in our discussions with others.  But we disciples don’t get to pick the message we preach.  As we witness with our lives to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we have to preach the whole of it, or else our preaching is diminished.

    So it’s important for us to remember, I think, that while God never promises to make our lives free and easy, he does promise to bless us.  He will bless us with whatever gifts we need to do the work he has called us to do, the work for which he formed us in our mother’s womb.  We may be reasonably happy in this life, but the true happiness must come later.  Our reward, which Jesus promises will be great, will surely be in heaven.

  • Thursday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Truth is quite a topic these days. Mostly because people choose to define truth in any way that suits them.  Absolute truth is taken to be authoritarianism and it’s the real death of any kind of conversation that would lead to conversion. It’s the kind of thing that has some people valuing property over people, or pets over the unborn – so many things that if we really examined them, they don’t even make sense.  When we allow ourselves to accept moral relativism, then anything goes.  Yet it is absolute truth that is at the center of today’s Liturgy of the Word.

    Saint Paul exhorts his friend Timothy to be scrupulously careful to teach and defend the truth – “without deviation,” as he says at the end of today’s first reading.  And we have to be that scrupulous in teaching truth, because the Truth is Christ.  If we persevere in the Truth, we shall reign with Christ, but if we deny him he will deny us.  Being denied by Christ our mediator and Savior is tantamount to eternal death.  That’s what comes from deviating from the Truth.  It’s not a good way to go, ever.

    Jesus brings the Truth to life in the Gospel reading by presenting us with the basis of all Christian life: love of God and love of neighbor.  This is the Truth, it is the basis of the Gospel, it is the summation of all the law and the prophets, which is what the scribe was seeking of Jesus.  This is the Truth that we need in our world today.  This truth would have us defeat racism and indifference by loving our brothers and sisters and ultimately loving God.  This truth will change the world if we let it and if we proclaim it and live it.  If we accept this truth, we too will not be far from the Kingdom of God.

  • Pentecost

    Pentecost

    Today’s readings

    “Each one heard them speaking in his own language.”

    That line of the first reading always amazed me.  As I pictured it, I could just see people standing there in Jerusalem, and all at once these men start preaching and everyone hears them in his or her own language.  It must have been an amazing experience.  Certainly the message had to be powerful, but for each to hear it in his or her own native tongue had to boost the power of the experience for each of them.  This was the power of the Holy Spirit on display for all the world to see.

    That powerful experience helped to ignite the fire that was the early Church.  If not for this amazing experience, we wouldn’t have the Church today.  Because Jesus returned to the Father and they sent forth the Spirit, those early apostles preached the word to everyone and the Church was fostered that brings us the faith in our own day.  This is why Pentecost is often called the birthday of the Church.

    What I think is important to note about that experience is that the gift of the Holy Spirit enabled the Church to speak the Gospel to everyone.  Not just those who spoke Hebrew, or even Greek or Latin.  The reading from Acts is clear:

    We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites,

    inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,

    Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,

    Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene,

    as well as travelers from Rome,

    both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs,

    yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues

    of the mighty acts of God.

    So this gift of the Spirit helped the primitive Church to universalize the Gospel message.  Christ desired that we would all be one; we’ve heard that over and over in the Gospel readings during the Easter season.  This gift of the Spirit underscores just how universal that unity was intended to be.

    That experience enabled a sixth century African author to preach this in a sermon on this day:

    Therefore if somebody should say to one of us, “You have received the Holy Spirit, why do you not speak in tongues?” his reply should be, “I do indeed speak in the tongues of all men, because I belong to the body of Christ, that is, the Church, and she speaks all languages. What else did the presence of the Holy Spirit indicate at Pentecost, except that God’s Church was to speak in the language of every people?”

    And so she does.  Thanks be to God, the Gospel is preached all over the world every day.  And souls continue to be won for the Lord.  But for that Gospel to be believed, for it to be adopted and lived, it needs to be backed up by the way that we live.  Many people may miss our preaching, but they can’t fail to notice our living – one way or the other.  As Saint Francis once said, “Preach the Gospel at all times.  When necessary, use words.”

    Sometimes words fail us.  We might not know the right thing to say in any situation, but in those moments, our actions can preach much louder than our speaking.  We often experience that when someone close to us has lost a loved one, or is grieving in some way.  Words aren’t going to make that all better, but our presence and being there for them says much more than our words could ever say.  That presence may be just the right thing to say at that time.

    I experienced that same kind of thing this week as I watched the video, over and over, of the horrifying murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.  I think, by now, it should go without saying that treating another human being that way in any situation is objectively wrong.  But what is also wrong is the still present racism that underlies the whole situation, and others like them, including the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.  The fact that these situations happen over and over frankly means that we aren’t speaking the Gospel in every time and place.  Because there is no room in the Gospel message for racism, bigotry, and any kind of rhetoric that seeks to smooth those things over or make excuses for them.  They are objectively wrong, period.

    What do we say in the face of these horrifying events?  Honestly, I don’t know what we can say.  Even “I’m sorry” rings hollow when the structures that continue to make these things happen persist.  We need to speak the Gospel in these situations by the way we live our lives.  We need to make it our life’s work to accept every person as if he or she were Christ, because that is what the Church has taught us always and in every age.  If the Gospel is to mean anything in the world today, we have to be people who inconvenience ourselves to love others before we do anything else, or our preaching will continue to ring hollow.

    And we have no better example for this than our Lord Jesus Christ, who took on the worst in us because he saw the best in us.  He it is who took our sins – our sins – to the cross, and rose to everlasting glory that we might have the same – all of us.  He it is who returned to the Father and with him sent their Holy Spirit upon the earth that we might all be one, that we might, as Saint Benedict has said, go together to everlasting life.

    This broken world needs to hear the preaching in our actions, in the way we treat every person, so that this world can become the Kingdom of God.  We may well be the only time someone ever sees Jesus; may the preaching of our lives be so strong that they can’t fail to see Jesus in us.

    Come Holy Spirit! Renew the face of the earth!

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    A lack of unity will kill us all. Jesus knew this, and so did St. Paul. In fact, St. Paul used a lack of unity among the Jews to save his own life. He knew that the Pharisees, of which he was one, believed in the resurrection of the dead, and angels and spirit. He knew that the Sadducees did not (which, as one of my seminary professors used to say, is why they are sad, you see…). When Paul appealed to the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection of the dead, he got them on their side, and the skirmish that ensued caused the commander to whisk Paul to safety. He was not to die this day; the Lord had other plans for him.

    As Jesus gets ready for his own death in the gospel reading today, he prays for the unity of the first disciples. He knew that they would be challenged greatly by the world, because they were no longer of the world. They belonged to God now, and that would be the source of their unity. That unity would keep them together and ensure that a reasoned, unified message would be proclaimed throughout the world and throughout the ages. That was the only way the gospel could be proclaimed to every creature on earth.

    In our day, unity is just as critical as it ever was. We still believe in ONE holy, catholic and apostolic church. We believe that Jesus came to found just ONE church, and that the fragmentations that exist among us are the result of sinfulness and broken humanity. We need to be people who witness to the joy of our faith so that we can bind up all that disunity and become once again one people, healed of all divisions. We are called to be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one, so that we can witness to all the world the saving power of our one, almighty God.

  • Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter (School/RE Mass)

    Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter (School/RE Mass)

    Today’s readings

    Jesus tells us today that sadness is always going to be a part of life.  That’s not the good news, that’s just the way things are.  I think we can all think about things that have made us sad, maybe even more so in these days when we’ve all been sheltered in place, away from each other.  We haven’t gotten to see our friends.  We didn’t get to have Olympic Day, or any of the fun end of the year activities.  Our second graders are all ready for First Holy Communion, but we haven’t been able to do that yet.  Then there are the regular sad things: Maybe we have had a good friend who has moved away and we don’t get to see them very much.  Maybe we have lost a pet or a toy that we have liked a lot.  Maybe we didn’t get picked for a team, or didn’t understand something in school.  All those things make us sad.

    And some of us have had harder things that have been sad for us.  Maybe your parents aren’t getting along or have split up.  That’s very sad.  Just last week, my family gathered to remember that my father died several years ago.  All these years later, I still miss him a lot, and I am very sad – maybe you too have had a grandparent or someone you’re very close to die and you don’t get to see them again.  That’s a sadness that doesn’t go away soon.

    Sadness is a part of our life, and Jesus acknowledges that.  He tells his disciples that he is going away – that he is going to ascend into heaven, which we will celebrate on Sunday – and they will miss him.  But he also tells them, and us, that sadness is not forever.  He says that it’s just like a woman who is having a baby.  She is sad because giving birth hurts so much.  But after a while, the baby is born and the pain stops, and she gets to see the beautiful child she brought into the world and is happy again.  Your moms probably have stories like that about when you were born!  In that same way, the things that make us sad won’t last forever.  One day, we will get to see Jesus face-to-face and he will bring us happiness that lasts forever.  On that great day, there won’t be anything that can ever make us sad again.

    That doesn’t mean that our sadness doesn’t hurt right now, because it sure does.  It just means it won’t hurt forever.  Because Jesus loves us, we can look forward to happiness forever, even if we have to put up with a little sadness now and then.  We can count on the love of Jesus to get us through our bad times, because he promises that he will always be with us, always and forever.  

    Sadness doesn’t get to rule our lives, because Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    There are a lot of miracles going on in today’s first reading.  First, there’s the earthquake that brings down the prison walls, although Paul and Silas did not take advantage of the situation.  Then there’s the conversion of the jailer, who was an employee of the Romans, and so would have had to worship their pagan gods.  You might also note the rather miraculous faith of Paul and Silas, who despite being very badly mistreated on account of Jesus, did not abandon their faith but actually grew stronger in it.  And you might also consider it a miracle that, when they are jailed and singing hymns at midnight, the other prisoners didn’t gang up and beat them into silence!

    When you look at it as a vignette, it’s all so amazing, although Paul and Silas probably just viewed it as part and parcel of the life they had been called to live.  They had faith in Jesus and they probably didn’t expect anything less than the miracles they were seeing!

    People of great faith experience such great miracles. This is not to say that all their troubles go away; Paul and Silas were still imprisoned, and continued to be hounded by the people and the government because of their faith. But the miracles come through the abiding presence of Christ, giving us strength when we need it most, a kind word from a stranger that comes at the right moment, a phone call from a friend that makes our day, an answer to prayer that is not what we expected but exactly what we needed. The Psalmist today has that same great faith: “Your right hand saves me, O Lord,” he sings. Let us pray that our hearts and eyes and minds would be open to see the miracles happening around us, that we might sing that same great song!

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter (School/RE Mass)

    Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter (School/RE Mass)

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel gives us some of the best news I think we can possibly get.  Jesus says he no longer calls us slaves, but instead he calls us his friends.  That’s important for us to know because I think most people believe that God doesn’t really have to care about us, his creatures, that much.  He could just give us commandments and expect us to follow them or else.  He doesn’t really have to teach us anything so that we understand him; he could just expect us to follow his commandments out of fear.  We think about God that way sometimes.

    But that’s not what Jesus is about.  We know that God made us so that he could love us and we could love him.  Even when we sinned and could not be his friends any more, he didn’t leave us to die in our sins.  Instead, he sent his Only-Begotten Son, Jesus, to become one of us and to pay the price that we deserved for our sins.  Jesus died on the cross, to pay that price, and he rose from the dead, so that we could be friends with God once again, and so that all those who believe in him and follow his ways can have the opportunity of eternal life with God in his heavenly kingdom.

    That’s the Good News!  That’s the Gospel!  Jesus says he doesn’t call us slaves anymore.  That’s because we aren’t slaves to sin anymore, or at least we don’t have to be.  We can instead turn to Jesus and be his friends, if we do what he commands us.  And the commandment he gives us today seems like a very simple one: love one another.

    Except that it’s not so simple all the time, is it?  Sometimes loving one another is hard to do.  Loving one another means we have to put others first.  Loving one another isn’t something we get to do only when we want to, but instead we have to do it all the time.  Loving one another means that we follow all the other commandments, because “love one another” is what sums them all up.  “Love one another” means that we remember that each person is created by God who loves them so then we have to love them too.

    But we don’t have to worry about how hard it is to love one another.  We have a God who loves us first and loves us best.  Because he loved us and sent his Only-Begotten Son Jesus to show us his love, we have the grace we need to love one another.  We can love one another when it’s hard to do, when they really make us mad sometimes, because God loves us all the time, even when we are hard to love, even when we make others mad and make God sad because of what we do or what we fail to do.

    We aren’t slaves anymore.  We have been set free.  But being free doesn’t mean we get to do whatever we want, whenever we want – that’s the same thing as being a slave to sin.  Being free means that we can love others and put others first because God has done exactly that for us – over and over again!

    So how will you love someone else today?  How will you love your parents or your siblings while you are doing e-learning today?  How will you love your teachers who might be explaining something very important that maybe you think is boring?  How will you teachers love the students who don’t seem to be getting it?  How will we all love our families today?  How will we put all these people first?  During the quiet parts of today’s Mass, let’s think about that.  Let’s come up with a plan to love someone even when they are hard to love.  Let’s love one another because God loves us first and loves us best!

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    So pretend you are Paul or Barnabas or one of the other apostles.  Think about all the things they went through in that first reading. Paul hasn’t even been a Christian for very long, and already he is being hounded and persecuted.  Maybe that makes sense because some people probably viewed his conversion as a kind of treason.  Whatever the case, as they speak out boldly in the name of Jesus, they receive nothing but violent abuse from the Jews.  So then they turn then to the Gentiles who were delighted to hear the Word preached to them.  But the Jews didn’t even leave that alone; they stirred up some of the prominent Gentiles to persecute Paul and Barnabas and eventually they expelled them from their territory.  What a horrible reception they received over and over again.

    But, listen to the last line of that first reading again: “The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”

    Let that sink in for a minute: would that be your reaction?  Or would you say, “enough is enough” and let God stir up someone else to preach the Word?  Obviously, that’s not what Paul and Barnabas, or any of the other disciples did, or we wouldn’t be here today.  No, they were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God!

    That’s the way joy works. It’s not something conditioned by the external events of a person’s life.  Joy is not a feeling. Joy, instead, is a direct result of the disciple’s decision to give their life to Christ and to follow his way – wherever that may take him or her.  Joy does not mean that the disciple won’t experience sadness or even hard times.  I think we all get that disciples get tested as we go through these pandemic days.  But joy does mean that the disciple will never give in to the sadness or the hard times because all those things have been made new in Christ.

    Christ is the source of our true joy.  We disciples must choose to live lives of joy and remain unaffected by the world and the events of our lives.  We choose joy because we know the One who is our Salvation, and because it is he who fills us with joy and the Holy Spirit.

    We have joy because Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

  • Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    “Athirst is my soul for the Living God.”

    The Psalmist today sums up what is going on in the entire Liturgy of the Word.  In the book of Acts, we see that even the Gentiles seek salvation in Christ, and Peter learns that those God has called to holiness cannot be treated as unclean.  In the Gospel, we have the image of the Good Shepherd – a bit of a re-run from yesterday – whose voice the faithful hear in the depths of their hearts.

    At the core of our creation, all of us – and not just the “us” who are here in this church or tuning in online, but all people – all of us yearn for the Living God.  This is not surprising, because God made us – all of us – for himself, in his own image.  This is an important point for us Christians to get: God made all of us, created us good, created us for himself.  And so, deep down inside, every person yearns for the Living God.

    And it’s this realization that makes our lack of unity so very troublesome; it’s this realization that puts the work of evangelization on the front burner.  God created only one People and Christ established only one Church.  God made us to be one, and one with him, and it is sin that has driven us apart and kept us apart for so very, very long.

    And so our goal as God’s people is to become one in him who made us, and one in him who redeemed us.  The work of evangelization is so important because God’s creation will not be complete until all of us are one.  And so we disciples have to make it our life’s vocation to see to it that everyone who knows us hears Christ in us, we have to open doors so that people can come to Christ and we have to tear down barriers of hostility or elitism.  The souls of every person cry out, “Athirst is my soul for the Living God.”  Who, then, are we to hinder God’s unifying work?

    Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!