Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Preaching, Homiletics & Scripture

  • Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

    Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

    Today’s readings

    Today’s memorial of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus is a feast of siblings, which is unique and compelling.  It’s a wonderful reminder of how family should be: united in faith, and bringing each other to Christ. 

    The story of the raising of Lazarus, of which we have a fragment in today’s Gospel reading, is a story of how shared faith can triumph over death.  Martha and Mary reacted in different ways to the death of their brother and the absence of Jesus in the midst of it, but they both came to new faith as Jesus led them to a new reality.  It’s our responsibility to bring our loved ones to Jesus, and for Martha and Mary, the need for that was very real. 

    Martha and Mary, in a sense, are catechumens, and their coming to new faith in the presence of Jesus is a foreshadowing of the journey of faith we all make as we come to know and live in the presence of our Lord. Today’s memorial remembers Martha who toiled for the sake of hospitality, and professed her faith in Jesus when her brother died.  It remembers Martha too, who famously sat at the feet of Jesus, drinking in his every word.  And we also remember Lazarus, from whom, interestingly enough, we never hear, but who Jesus loved enough to raise him from death.  In them we see ourselves: called to serve and profess our faith, called to contemplate the presence of Jesus, and called to the resurrection of the dead, which Lazarus saw firsthand

  • Friday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Maybe you remember memorizing the Ten Commandments as a child.  I do.  I sometimes think that memorizing things is a lost art.  Certainly memorizing things like the Ten Commandments doesn’t happen as much as it used to, and that’s too bad.  The Psalmist is the one who tells us why today: “The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart.”  The commandments are not meant to be burdensome.  They are meant to give us a framework for life that allows us maximum freedom by staying in close relationship with our Lord and God, and in right relationship with the people in our lives.  Certainly the Ten Commandments, with all their “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” have gotten a negative reputation over the years.  But if we would have true freedom, then we must give them another shot at our devotion, for they are indeed the words of everlasting life.

  • Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    During the summer before my final year of seminary, I worked as a hospital chaplain.  It ended up being a pretty rough summer for me and the other men and women in the student chaplain group: we had a record number of deaths and tragic accidents to deal with, and it was, as you might expect, getting us pretty down.  Then for morning prayer one day, one of my fellow students brought in today’s Gospel, and we reflected especially on the end part of the reading:

    “But blessed are your eyes, because they see,

    and your ears, because they hear.

    Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people

    longed to see what you see but did not see it,

    and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

    The more we explored that reading, the more we became aware that, even in the midst of all of the very real tragedy we were experiencing, we were also experiencing some very real great blessing. How true that is for all of us in life. We tend to dwell on the negative things we are seeing, and no one would ever doubt that we all have to see some pretty rotten stuff in our lives, some people it seems more so than others. But the problem comes when we let go of the blessing that comes too. We people of faith have to be convinced that God is with us even in, perhaps especially in, our darkest moments, and gives us glimpses of the kingdom of God that perhaps others don’t get to see. Blessed are our eyes when we get to see them!

    The people in Moses’ day didn’t ever really get to see God.  They got to see Moses, who sort of acted as an intermediary for them with God.  No one else could see God and live.  But our eyes do get to see God.  We can see God in the Eucharist, we can see God in the person sitting next to us, we can see God in the graced moments of our day.  Maybe we just need to open our eyes to see God more often, but he is there, longing to bless our eyes with the vision of him.

  • The Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I’m not a person who has a green thumb.  When I was growing up, we had a family garden, but I wasn’t the greatest at making it happen.  I’d pull the weeds and stuff, and even try to help it grow, but it never worked out very well.  But I’m glad I had a little introduction to gardening in those days, because I think gardening provides a bit of insight into the spiritual life, and into what Jesus is telling us in the Gospel reading today.

    What’s remarkable to me about a garden is that the seed that is planted looks, for all the world, lifeless … like something that is already dead.  It’s shriveled up and dry, so it’s really hard to believe it could give life to anything.  But when you put that dried up old seed in fertile soil, give it some water and nourishment, let the sun shine on it, eventually it grows up to become something wonderful: flowers to delight us, vegetables for our table.

    Driving around the area, it’s striking to see the cornfields:  I’m often struck by the straight and orderly rows of corn that grow there.  The farmers take great care, it seems to me, to make sure they are planted that way: in orderly rows.  So when I hear the story we have in today’s Gospel reading about seed being scattered willy-nilly all over the place, some of it not even landing on suitable soil, well, it makes me wonder.

    But the original hearers of the parable would have understood what Jesus was saying.  It was a method used at that time: seed would be scattered, and then the soil would be tilled thus planting the seeds.  And so they would have understood that sometimes the scattered seed falls in places that the farmer didn’t intend, and those seeds don’t come to life, or if they do, it’s not for long, but, either way, it’s no big deal.

    So Jesus explains the parable for his disciples and for us.  The seed is the seed of faith.  God scatters it with wild abandon, pouring it out freely that his chosen ones – which obviously includes you and me – would come to know him.  He tills the soil of faith by sending us the sacraments, the Word of God, and his great love and mercy.  Sometimes it works: we receive the seed of faith, it’s watered in the sacrament of baptism, fed with the Eucharist and the other sacraments, and we make of ourselves fertile ground, letting it come up and grow and give life to the world.  But sometimes, of course it doesn’t work out that way.  We all know people who have received that seed of faith but haven’t let it blossom.

    The seed might fall in a place where the faith is not nourished and Christ is not known.  Maybe it’s a foreign land without benefit of missionaries, and in those cases it’s understandable that the faith wouldn’t take hold.  But it could even be a little closer to home.  Perhaps the seed falls on those whose turbulent lives can’t give the seed any roots: they receive the word of God with joy, but the trials and tribulations of daily living upset everything and the faith never really sinks in.  Or, maybe it falls on us embroiled as we are with the cares of the world.  The “weeds” of our living are improper relationships, too much time playing video games or surfing the wrong places of the internet, watching too much television, wasting time on passing things.  There is so much that can distract us from our faith, and too often, we are not as diligent about weeding the gardens of our souls as we should be.

    We, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, are called to be rich, fertile ground to give life to the faith planted in our hearts.  That means that we must keep ourselves fresh by renewing the waters of baptism in our hearts.  We do that by continuing to grow in our faith: by studying the Scriptures, by nurturing our prayer life, by intentionally going deeper in our relationship with Jesus who is the tiller of the soil of our faith.  We must feed that seed of faith by dedicating ourselves to the Eucharist and coming to Mass and receiving the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation all the time, whether it’s convenient or not.  We must weed out the distractions of our lives and give that seed of faith room to grow.  We must shine the brilliant sunlight of God’s love on that faith by living the Gospel and reaching out in love to brothers and sisters who are in need.

    God scatters the seeds of faith with wild abandon, because he created us in love to return to him, fully grown and abundant in the faith.  We have to be intentional about caring for the crop we are meant to be.  God gives us the seed, gives us the things we need to nurture it, but he doesn’t do all the work for us.  We have to respond to his great love and abundant grace by using what he gives us so we can become what he wants for us.

    We are the ones who have been called to yield “a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”  The seed of faith comes in the form of something that might, for all the world, look dead – Christ’s saving action on the cross.  When we water and feed and weed and let the light shine on that faith, we can give life to the world around us and give witness that the world’s death is no match for the salvation we have in Christ.

  • Saint Kateri Tekawkitha, Virgin

    Saint Kateri Tekawkitha, Virgin

    Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 to a Christian Algonquin woman.  Her parents died in a smallpox epidemic – which left Kateri herself disfigured and half blind – when she was just four years old.  She went to live with her uncle who succeeded her own father as chief of the clan.  Her uncle hated the missionaries who, because of the Mohawks’ treaty with France, were required to be present in the region.  Kateri, however, was moved by their words.  She refused to marry a Mohawk brave, and at age 19, was baptized on Easter Sunday.  At age 23, she took a vow of virginity.

    Kateri’s life was one of extreme penance and fasting.  This she took upon herself as a penance for the eventual conversion of her nation.  Kateri said: “I am not my own; I have given myself to Jesus.  He must be my only love.  The state of helpless poverty that may befall me if I do not marry does not frighten me.  All I need is a little food and a few pieces of clothing.  With the work of my hands I shall always earn what is necessary and what is left over I’ll give to my relatives and to the poor.  If I should become sick and unable to work, then I shall be like the Lord on the cross.  He will have mercy on me and help me, I am sure.”

    Saint Kateri was beatified in 1980 and canonized in 2012.  Our call to personal holiness might not be as radical as hers was.  But we are called to embrace the cross and follow Christ wherever he leads us, and we may well be called upon to sacrifice whatever is comfortable in our lives to do it.

  • Saint Benedict, Abbot

    Saint Benedict, Abbot

    Today’s readings

    The spiritual life, almost by definition, isn’t easy.  Today’s first reading proves it.  As the reading begins, Jacob wrestles with “some man,” who turns out to be God himself.  They tussle all day long and finally declare a draw, but the battle leaves poor Jacob limping from the fight.  In the end though, he receives a blessing.  And that’s the way it is, brothers and sisters, that’s how the spiritual life works.  We often wrestle with God, or with something he’s asking of us, and occasionally the battle marks us or scars us, but we always end up blessed by the experience.  That is, of course, if we are ready to do battle for the long haul.

    The spiritual life is a long battle: a marathon, and not a sprint.  You have to identify what you’re wrestling with: maybe it’s a call to change your life in some way or take on some new thing.  Maybe it’s a prayer life that is a little stale.  Or maybe even an urge to move in a different direction in your vocation or your career, or even in a relationship.  It’s a struggle, and it could well involve considerable wrestling until you know what’s really at stake.  But when you identify it, you have to stay with it, wrestle all day and night, until you receive the blessing.

    In my young adult life, I struggled with my calling, which finally resulted in my going to seminary.  During that struggle, a wonderful source of inspiration was reading from The Rule of St. Benedict, which is a great reflection on the balance we are called to in life.  It was also one of the most groundbreaking works of spirituality and monastic rule at that time.  It remains a spiritual classic today.  

    Saint Benedict, whose feast we celebrate today, is known to be the founder of western monasticism.  His rule is used by many religious communities as the basis of their own rule of life.

    There are a lot of real gems in the Rule.  One of my favorites comes from the second to last chapter: Just as there is an evil zeal of bitterness which separates from God and leads to hell, so there is a good zeal which separates from vices and leads to God and to life everlasting.  This zeal, therefore, the monks should practice with the most fervent love.  Thus they should anticipate one another in honor; most patiently endure one another’s infirmities, whether of body or of character; vie in paying obedience one to another—no one following what he considers useful for himself, but rather what benefits another—; tender the charity of brotherhood chastely; fear God in love; love their Abbot with a sincere and humble charity; prefer nothing whatever to Christ.

    Friends, this is advice not just for monks, but for all of us.  When we prefer other things to Christ, when we are afraid to bear witness to the truth, we lose every benefit of relationship with Jesus.  Possessions cannot sustain us; our fears cannot sustain us.  So we have to follow Christ with incredible zeal.  We may have to wrestle with that in our lives, but it will always bring us great blessing.

  • The Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    You are not in the flesh;
    on the contrary, you are in the spirit…

    Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans is really a masterpiece of Christian doctrine and discipleship.  If you haven’t read it in a while, or ever, I think it’s good summer reading.  That reading will give you a vast array of tools to grow in your faith and discipleship during the rest of this liturgical year and the one to come. 

    Today’s second reading takes a portion of this letter to consider the idea of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives.  I think we Catholics don’t often think enough about the Holy Spirit.  Receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit when we receive the sacrament of Confirmation, we have mighty power, and that power, sadly, remains untapped in many of us.  The saints are people who have lived according to the Holy Spirit’s power in their lives, and chief among them, of course, is the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was so filled with the Holy Spirit that she was able to lay down her own life to give birth to Our Savior, and to become the queen of apostles.  Saints are people who are definitely in heaven, and they get there, friends, not on their own merits, but by relying on and living with the Holy Spirit.

    Saint Paul is really clear today: we are not in the flesh, we are in the spirit.  So we cannot live stuck in our fleshly existence.  He goes on to say, “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  And the life he’s talking about, friends, is the great gift of eternal life for which we were all created.  But the thing about that is that we sometimes think, well, I can live by the flesh now, because that eternal life thing is far off in the future.  Not so fast.  The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, now, as our Lord tells us over and over in the Gospels.  So if we want life in the kingdom, life forever, eternal life, we have to start living it now, living by the Spirit now.  There is no other way.

    So, as Saint Paul tells us, we have to put to death the deeds of the body, the works of the flesh.  So this, dear friends, is a call to an examination of conscience.  What is in our lives that needs to die?  We probably know some of them: impure relationships; taking part in addictions that sever our pure relationships with family, friends, community, and God; darker things like consulting mediums, new age philosophies, and practices of manifestation; spending too much time on the internet or watching television (disciples shouldn’t be binge watching anything), and the list goes on.  The first step in living for eternity is putting to death the things of the flesh, so we should all give that some serious prayer in the days ahead.

    And then, the next step, is living in the Spirit.  If our first step was to reflect on what in us needs to die, this next step should have us praying about what in us needs to live.  What is it that God has given us in our lives into which we need to pour our energy and talent and resources so that we live for the Kingdom and give glory to God?  If we have a family, then we need to bring the Spirit to our family: we need to pray for them and with them, give them quality and loving time, find the joy in them.  We priests have to pour everything into our ministry: loving our parishioners, giving them our time in the sacraments and in our prayer, showing them how to love Jesus and live for the Kingdom.  Wherever God has put us, we need to pour the Spirit we have received into that situation.  We need to bring everyone around us into the Kingdom, and find our joy in living for God and the other people in our lives.

    We are no longer men and women in the flesh, we are people of the Spirit, with the Spirit of Christ in us, and so in Christ we cast aside those deeds of darkness and, taking his yoke, we accomplish the work Jesus has given us.  This is the way, friends.  This is the way that brings us reasonable happiness in this life, and supreme happiness forever with our God.

  • Thursday of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    God wants to heal us from the inside out. Which is why Jesus says to the paralytic, “Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.” It would have been easy for Jesus to snap his fingers and heal the man’s paralysis, but that is not what he was most concerned about. Sometimes when a person has been sick a long time, there are resentments toward God and toward other people that have added to the misery of their illness. Jesus knew this, and took the opportunity to heal the man of those maladies as well. Saying to him, “Rise and walk” was merely incidental, and Jesus does that too. What we see in today’s Gospel reading is that our God longs to heal us from the inside out.

    The incident with Abraham and Isaac feels like something else, though, doesn’t it? It almost seems as if this is a manipulative attempt on God’s part to see if Abraham was really on his side or not. But that’s not what God is doing here. I think this encounter shows us our God who is aching to pour out his blessings on us. If we will but offer him everything, he will but to work through our gifts and blessings to bless us even more. Listen to the promise he makes to Abraham: “I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing.” Finally, God himself provides the lamb for the sacrifice, which is a foreshadowing of the way that he himself will give his own Son, Jesus Christ, to be the lamb of sacrifice for our sins.

    Just as Jesus healed the paralytic from the inside out, so God blesses Abraham from the inside out, giving him knowledge of a God who longs to provide blessing and healing for his people. As we make our own offering during Mass today, we too can come to be fed from the inside out, by offering God whatever we hold most dear, knowing that he intends to bless us beyond our wildest imaginings.

  • The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    There’s a hymn that we sing often called “All are Welcome.” It’s been around for a while and is somewhat of a “moldy oldy.” That’s because I think we like to say we are welcoming, but sometimes it’s really hard to really welcome “all.”

    But that song came to mind this week as I was reflecting on the readings for today.  There is a strong theme of welcoming, of hospitality, in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  But it’s not just a matter of saying to someone who’s new, “Hey, how are you?  Welcome here!”  The hospitality that we’re being called to in the readings today is a welcome of the Word of God.  And that sounds much easier than it actually is, so hang on to that, because we will come back to it.

    In our first reading from the second book of Kings, Elisha the prophet is extended hospitality by the Shunemite woman.  Beginning by giving him food, eventually she builds a little room on the roof of her house so that Elisha could stay there whenever he was travelling through town.  We don’t know if she was a believer or not, but she recognizes that Elisha is a holy man and uses her influence and means to see that his prophetic ministry could flourish.

    In the Gospel reading, Jesus speaks of those who would welcome the apostles as they went about their preaching mission.  “Whoever receives you receives me,” he tells them.  When someone accepts the messenger – and, importantly, the message that he or she brings – one receives the giver of the message.  This is the basis of our Catholic teaching that Christ is present in the word of God proclaimed in church.

    The true prophet, of which Elisha was one, always brings the Word of God.  The Shunemite woman reacted to the Word of God by making it welcome, in the person of Elisha.  She is a model for us of the hospitality and welcome of the Word that we are asked to consider this day.  So we too have to feed the Word and make a home for the Word.  We can feed the Word by exposing ourselves to the Scriptures in prayer and reflection.  I had a professor in seminary who used to beg us to read the Bible every day – even just a few verses.  He would say, “Then, brothers, when you close your eyes in death, you will open them in heaven and recognize where you are!”  When we feed the Word, we are able to grow in our faith and the Word will bring life to our souls.

    From feeding the Word, we then have to build a little room for it, on the roof of our spiritual houses.  It’s instructive that Elisha’s room was built on the roof, because then the Word of God was over everything in the Shunemite woman’s life.  The Word of God was the head of her house and the guiding principle of her family life.  When we build that room, figuratively in our own lives, it must take top precedence for us too.  Jesus makes that a commandment in today’s Gospel.

    And so we feed the Word and give it a home in our lives, and then it becomes the guiding principle of our own lives, as it should be.  But here’s the thing about that, and maybe this is why so many people don’t want to do this.  Because there is a cost to welcoming the Word of God.  Remember that the prophets were not always as welcome as Elisha was in the Shunemite woman’s house.  The prophets were often berated, ridiculed, even imprisoned, beaten and murdered, because the Word of God isn’t always welcome.  Jesus says in the Gospel reading today, “Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.”  We have to be clear about the fact that we fully expect that reward to be in heaven, because it’s tough to be a prophet in the world, in any age or place.

    And that’s because the Word of God calls us to live a certain way.  The Word of God wants us to be open to change, the Word of God actually demands that we change.  The Word of God wants us to be Christ to others, because Christ is the Word of God.  And so we must be forgiving of those who harm us, loving to those who test us, reaching out to those who need us (even when it’s inconvenient, or they’re not the people we want to be around), welcoming of those who are different than us.  Welcoming the Word of God means that we have to take up our cross and follow our Lord, meaning that there will be death involved and we might have to give up a whole lot.

    In today’s world, the Word of God calls us to be Christ in a world that is increasingly intolerant of anyone who isn’t us.  We all want what we want when we want it, and we don’t tolerate delay or inconvenience in any form.  We hate the idea of compromise so much that political discussion isn’t discussion at all, and no one’s life is worth as much as our own, no matter the stage or circumstance of that life.  Add to that the scourge of racism, war, and attacks on family life and other values, and we live in a very unwelcoming world indeed.  But into that world, we are called to be Christ to others, to love without counting the cost, and to be a living witness to the Gospel.

    Doing that means we may have to die to what we think is important, die to our own self-interests and desires, die to what makes us feel comfortable.  That’s what giving up one’s family meant in Jesus’ day: being cast out of the family was a form of death.  So not loving mother and father and son or daughter more than Christ meant dying to life in this world.  And dying to life in this world is exactly what welcoming the Word of God will cost us.  That’s the message of the Gospel today.

    But giving up our lives will not be without its reward.  The Shunemite woman was rewarded with a child, even though her husband was advanced in years.  Jesus says the same.  Giving the Word of God even just a cup of water to nourish it and let it grow will be rewarded in ways we cannot even imagine.

    So welcoming the Word of God will definitely cost us something, but it will also change everything.  Are you willing to embrace the cost and build a home in your life for the Word of God?

  • Saturday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Growing up, did you ever laugh when someone else got in trouble, or when things were tense, and then get caught? “Who me? No, I didn’t laugh…” That kind of sounds like the conversation between the Lord and Sarah today. Yesterday, it was Abraham who laughed, and for the same reason. They simply could not believe that God’s generosity and blessing could overcome the limitations of their advanced age. But God had plans for Abraham and his family, and so age and even laughter could not prevent the beginnings of the covenant.

    Contrast their incredulity and lack of faith with the faith of the centurion in today’s Gospel. Jesus didn’t even have to go to his house to cure his servant. The centurion’s faith was so great that even distance provided no obstacle to blessing. As I mentioned yesterday, we can’t be too hard on Abraham and Sarah. They didn’t yet have the experience of the Lord that we have, or even that the centurion had. That centurion had seen Jesus’ mighty deeds and probably had come to believe because of that.

    This raises a rather uncomfortable pastoral question, I think. How many good, faithful people, have prayed their hearts out, totally trusting in God’s power to heal and save, and yet their loved one remains ill, or perhaps was not saved from death. That’s a hurt that a lot of people carry with them for a long time, it may even be that they have felt they had done something wrong or perhaps didn’t have quite enough faith. The answer of course, is that none of those are true. God’s answers to prayer can take a lot of different forms, and sometimes he doesn’t answer the way that we would have picked. That doesn’t mean that God is not merciful, just, or good, and it doesn’t mean that we are not faithful. It just means that whatever the blessing is, it’s different that we expected, and perhaps we can’t even see it just yet.

    The responsorial psalm today is actually Mary’s Magnificat, her song of praise and faith. What a wonderful model this is for all of us who struggle with faith and who struggle with the way God answers prayer sometimes. Mary’s life was not without its struggles and pain, but still she was able to sing, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” That is the prayer for all of us who struggle but still have faith.