Caritas Christi Urget Nos

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  • Friday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary time

    Friday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary time

    Today’s readings

    This morning we have to wrestle with the question: is there something in my life that distracts me from living my life as God intended that I need to cut out?  It’s a ruthless image that we find in our Gospel reading: gouge out an eye, cut off a hand – all of that is better than taking the road to hell.  And it really does need to be that ruthless.  Because hell is real and it’s not going to be pleasant.  So we really need to attach ourselves to Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life.  And whatever gets in the way of that needs to be brutally ejected from our lives.

    Yes, that might hurt sometimes.  But, as the cliché goes, whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.  Elijah the prophet knew that very well. He had just embarrassed the prophets of Baal, and Jezebel was pursuing him to take his life. In our first reading this morning, he takes refuge in a cave, and only upon hearing the tiny whispering sound of God’s presence is he able to continue the journey and complete his mission.

    Elijah had put to death the many prophets of Baal who were leading the people astray. Just so, we too need to be willing to put to death in us anything that does not lead us to Christ.  The pain of it can be joined to the sufferings of Christ for God’s glory and honor.  It is something that we can offer to our God, as we pray with the Psalmist, “I long to see your face, O Lord.”

  • Saint Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Anthony of Padua, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    I’m not sure if it’s that I’m getting older or that I have too many things to keep track of, but I find myself losing things, or losing my train of thought more often than I used to. I’m often grateful to Saint Anthony on those occasions! Saint Anthony is probably one of the best-known Catholic saints. As the patron for finding lost objects, I’m sure so many of us have prayed, “Tony, Tony, look around, something’s lost and can’t be found.” We all lose track of things from time to time, and it’s nice to have someone to help us find them.

    But the real story of Saint Anthony centers around finding the way to Christ. The gospel call to leave everything and follow Christ was the rule of Anthony’s life. Over and over again God called him to something new in his plan. Every time Anthony responded with renewed zeal and self-sacrifice to serve his Lord Jesus more completely. His journey as the servant of God began as a very young man when he decided to join the Augustinians, giving up a future of wealth and power to follow God’s plan for his life. But later, when the bodies of the first Franciscan martyrs went through the Portuguese city where he was stationed, he was again filled with an intense longing to be one of those closest to Jesus himself: those who die for the Good News.

    So Anthony entered the Franciscan Order and set out to preach to the Moors – a pretty dangerous thing to do. But an illness prevented him from achieving that goal. He went to Italy and was stationed in a small hermitage where he spent most of his time praying, reading the Scriptures and doing menial tasks.

    But that was not the end for Anthony’s dream of following God’s call. Recognized as a great man of prayer and a great Scripture scholar and theologian, Anthony became the first friar to teach theology to the other friars. Soon he was called from that post to preach to heretics, to use his profound knowledge of Scripture and theology to convert and reassure those who had been misled.

    So yes, Saint Anthony is the patron of finding lost objects, but what I really think he wants to help us find, is our way to Christ. As a teacher, a scholar and a man of faith, he was devoted to his relationship with God. And so his intercession for us might go a little deeper than where we left our keys. Maybe we find ourselves today having lost track of our relationship with God in some way. Maybe our prayer isn’t as fervent as it once was. Or maybe we have found ourselves wrapped up in our own problems and unable to see God at work in us. Maybe our life is in disarray and we’re not sure how God is leading us. If we find ourselves in those kinds of situations today, we might do well to call on the intercession of Saint Anthony.

    Saint Anthony, pray for us.

  • Saint Barnabas, Apostle

    Saint Barnabas, Apostle

    Today’s readings

    Saint Barnabas, a Jew of Cyprus, was not one of the original Twelve apostles, but is honored as an apostle because of his work of evangelization in the early Church. He was closely associated with Saint Paul, with whom, as we heard in our first reading today, he was sent out on mission. In this mission, Saint Barnabas served as a kind of mediator between Paul, formerly known as Saul, a persecutor of Christians, and the Jewish Christians, who were still, understandably, suspicious of this man who used to persecute Christians throughout Jerusalem.

    When a Christian community developed at Antioch, Barnabas was sent as the official representative of the Church of Jerusalem to incorporate them into the fold. He and Paul taught in Antioch for a year, after which they took relief contributions to Jerusalem.

    We see in today’s first reading that Saints Paul and Barnabas had become accepted in the community as charismatic leaders who led many to convert to Christianity. The Holy Spirit set them apart for Apostolic work and blessed their efforts with great success.

    Above all, these men desired to be salt for the earth and light for the world, as Jesus called us to be in today’s Gospel reading. Just as they led many people then to that kind of life through their words and actions, so their witness calls us to follow that same kind of life today.

    As we celebrate the Eucharist today, we might follow their call witness by examining our lives and our own lived discipleship. How willing are we to extend ourselves and reach out to others and not be bound by mere human precepts? In other words, how willing are we to give of ourselves no matter how other people might interpret that? How willing are we to do the unpopular thing and stand up for others? How do we live our call as believers? Do we actively seek to be salt and light in the world? Blessed are we who follow the example of St. Barnabas and blessed are we who benefit from his intercession.

    Saint Barnabas, pray for us.

  • The Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Where are you?

    This is the question God asked Adam and Eve early on in our first reading today. And for them, the answer to the question was that they were not in an especially good place. We know the story: God had given them everything they needed to live in the Garden of Eden, instructing them that the only thing they could not do was eat from the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden. The fall was already at work in them even then, because they found that the one thing they were not permitted to do was the one thing they wanted to do more than anything, and so they give into the seductive suggestions of the serpent and eat the fruit anyway.

    They soon find that they cannot hide from their sin: they are naked in the garden, and the sin is apparent, and so they do what fallen human beings have done ever since: they try to hide from God. Which would certainly be easy to do if God did not create man and woman out of love for them, and did not ultimately care about them. But he did care, and continued to seek relationship with them, and so he asks the question, the answer to which he certainly knows: “Where are you?”

    Explaining that they had found their nakedness, the weight of their sin is apparent. They desired something more than they desired God. That’s what sin is. And what ensues is the first recorded instance of “passing the buck:” the man blames the woman, and also blames God for putting the woman in the garden with him in the first place; the woman blames the serpent. So it has gone ever since: we desire something more than God, that sinful desire drags us down, we try to hide from God, and when we can’t, we blame someone else. Sin has entered the world and now darkens it in ways that are heartbreaking.

    Where are you?

    If you’re not seeing the face of God in your life; if you find yourself desiring something more than you desire God and the blessings God is giving you, it’s likely you’re not in a very good place right now. Maybe you have just lost track of where you are, who you are and where you should be going. Maybe you just plod along, very busy, very scattered by the rush and routine. Or maybe, like Adam, you are hiding out, afraid to face or deal with something that needs addressing.

    But that’s no way for us to live our lives, friends. God made us out of love, made us for love, made us to love, and he pursues us no matter how far we have wandered or to what depth we have fallen. If we come clean with God, name our sin and refuse to blame someone else, we can have forgiveness, we can have mercy. We can have God.

    That “unforgivable sin” of which our Gospel seeks is exactly the kind of thing that got us into trouble in the first place. It’s not something we’ve said or done to someone else, or even to God, but instead hiding from God and not wanting his mercy. It’s like having a world-class chef offer you a sumptuous meal, but refusing to eat it because you don’t want to sit down with him and eat, so you go away hungry. If you refuse God’s mercy because you don’t want his grace to change your life, you go away unforgiven. You sin against the Holy Spirit. It’s not that God won’t forgive, it’s that you don’t want to let God change your nakedness.

    Where are you?

    In these summer months, sometimes our routine changes. Maybe there isn’t that constant daily hustle of getting the kids to school and then practices and activities and all the other things that make life crazy. This is the time to see our lives for what they are, and come humbly to our God if we have been hiding.

    Sin is not who we are, sin is not part of human nature. Sin has certainly entered our world and we have to deal it in our daily lives, but it cannot ever define us unless we let it. Jesus was the most perfect example of human nature, completely free from sin. We can approach that glory when we stop hiding ourselves from God, when we let God into our lives, and when we let his grace change us into what we were created for. We are better than our sins.

    At our Eucharist today, maybe we can invite our merciful and loving God into our lives to:
         • help us deal with issues at home
         • tie up the evil and negative influences that afflict us and distract our children
         • help us break the habits we haven’t been able to break on our own
         • release our instincts to do good despite our fears
         • put aside anxieties that drain us of full life

    God doesn’t ever stop pursuing us in love. All we have to do is answer his call and say, “I’m right here, God. Standing before you in need of your mercy. Pleading for your grace. Wanting you and what you want for me more than anything. I’m right here.” Maybe we can make that our prayer today. I know it’s going to be mine.

    Where are you?

  • The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    Today’s readings

    There was a commercial many years ago that showed little vignettes of people having near miss accidents, who are saved from those accidents by other people. So a woman on the way out of a restaurant moves a coffee cup on the table of a man whose elbow might knock it over at any minute. A man stops to yell to alert a truck parking that it’s about to run into a motorcycle. There’s a whole bunch of them showing people doing little things to help other people. The announcer says something like “when it’s people doing these things, we call it responsibility.”

    It was a nice commercial, but I quibble a bit with that final line. Because I think that when it’s people doing things like that, we ought to call it love. Sure, it’s not the same kind of love that you might have for a spouse or family member or even a friend, but it’s the kind of love that helps us go outside ourselves and work for the good of others.

    Jesus’ love for us knows know bounds. In today’s Gospel, we see that not even death could limit his love for us. As he hung dying upon the cross, his love for us never wavered. And even after his death, the soldier’s lance helped blood and water to pour from his side. The blood that poured forth from Jesus’ side is the same blood we will be able to partake in this morning in the Eucharist. A blood that nourishes and strengthens us and cleanses us from our sins. The water is the same water you dipped your hand into on the way in today: the waters of baptism. That water washes our sins away and brings us into the body of the Church.

    One more way that the love of Jesus is made present in the Church is through you and me. We have to, as Saint Thomas Aquinas taught, love what Jesus loved as he hung on the cross. And that means that we are called to love each person we come in contact with, whether it’s our own friends or family members, or even a complete stranger. When we love each person in little or small ways, then some measure of the love that Jesus had on the cross for that person, the love which poured forth from his Sacred Heart, is poured forth upon our world yet again. The love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus isn’t meant just for us to hoard: we are meant to share it, so that that love may grow and abound and spread through all the world.

    May the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus draw us in today and be in our hearts and in all that we do.

    Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

  • Thursday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Truth is quite the 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. The encouragement in popular culture these days is to live “your truth,” whatever that might be. The problem is that “your truth” is different from my truth, which is always different from the Gospel, and it’s all just moral relativism in sheep’s clothing. 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, and that Word beckons us to accept the Truth with a capital “T”.

    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. It’s an injunction that is well taken, even in our own day: 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.

    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. Living “your truth” is wholly incompatible with love of God and love of neighbor, because living “your truth” lets you off the hook if love of God and/or love of neighbor becomes inconvenient. The Truth never changes, because Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. If we accept this Truth, we too will not be far from the Kingdom of God.

  • The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate with great joy one of the most wonderful feasts on our Church calendar, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Through this greatest of all gifts, we have been made one with our God who loves his people beyond all imagining. We experience this love in perhaps one of the most basic ways of our human existence, which is to say by being fed. Learning to satisfy our hunger is one of the first things we learn; we learn who we can depend on and develop close relationships with those people. Today’s feast brings it to a higher level, of course. The hunger we’re talking about is not mere physical hunger, but instead a deep inner yearning, a hunger for wholeness, for relatedness, for intimate union with our God. This is a hunger that we all have, and despite our feeble attempts to do otherwise, it cannot be filled with anything less than God.


    God has repeatedly sought a covenant with us. Eucharistic Prayer IV beautifully summarizes God’s desire: “You formed man in your own image and entrusted the whole world to his care, so that in serving you alone, the Creator, he might have dominion over all creatures. And when through disobedience he had lost your friendship, you did not abandon him to the domain of death. For you came in mercy to the aid of all, so that those who seek might find you. Time and again you offered them covenants and through the prophets taught them to look forward to salvation.” And unlike human covenants, which have to be ratified by both parties, and are useless unless both parties agree, the covenant offered by God is effective on its face. God initiates the covenant, unilaterally, out of love for us. Our hardness of heart, our sinfulness, our constant turning away from the covenant do not nullify that covenant. God’s grace transcends our weakness, God’s jealous love for us and constant pursuit of us is limitless.


    Today’s Liturgy of the Word shows us the history of the covenant. The first reading recalls the covenant God made with the Israelites through the ministry of Moses. The people agree to do everything the Lord commanded, and Moses seals the covenant by sprinkling the people with the blood of the sacrifice and saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words of his.” The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews makes the point that if the blood of sacrificed animals can bring people back in relationship with God, how much more could the blood of Christ draw back all those who have strayed. Christ is the mediator of the new covenant, as he himself said in the Gospel: “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.”
    And so we, among the many, benefit from Christ’s blood of the covenant. The preface for the Eucharist Prayer today says, “As we eat his flesh that was sacrificed for us, we are made strong, and, as we drink his Blood that was poured out for us, we are washed clean.” God’s desire for covenant with us cannot be stopped by sin or death or the grave because his grace is mightier than all of that.

    We disciples are called then to respond to the covenant. Having been recipients of the great grace of God’s love, we are called to live the covenant in our relationships with others. Which isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Sometimes people test our desire to be in covenant with them; sometimes they don’t even want to be in covenant with us. But the model for our relationships with others is the relationship God has with us. And so sometimes we have to unilaterally extend the covenant, even if the other isn’t willing, or doesn’t know, that we care for them. God wants to offer the covenant to everyone on earth, and he may well be using us to extend the covenant to those he puts in our path.


    We do this in so many ways. We might occasionally bring a bag of groceries for the Plainfield Interfaith Food Pantry, or even a few things for our micropantry here at the parish. We might spend time volunteering in our school or religious education program, or in any of our many ministries here. Any time we can freely give ourselves to others, we are extending the covenant to them by loving them unconditionally, as God has gloriously done for us.


    God’s covenant with us is renewed every day, and celebrated every time we come to receive Holy Communion. When we receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we are renewed in the covenant, strengthened in grace and holiness, and brought nearer to our God who longs for us. We who are so richly graced can do no less than extend the covenant to others, helping them too to know God’s love for them, feeding them physically and spiritually.

    The Psalmist asks today, “How shall I make a return to the LORD for all the good he has done for me?” And the answer is given: by taking up the chalice of salvation, drinking of God’s grace, renewing the covenant, and passing it on to others. May the Body and Blood of Christ keep us all safe for eternal life!

  • Saint Justin, Martyr

    Saint Justin, Martyr

    Today’s readings

    The greatest men and women who have ever lived have followed the example of our Lord Jesus Christ in that they have been willing to give their lives for the truth, for what they believed in, for what is right. In our first reading, Saint Jude encourages us in the faith to follow our Lord: “Build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”

    For Saint Justin, whose feast we celebrate today, kept that most holy faith by standing up for the truth. He was born a pagan, and spent a good deal of his youth studying pagan philosophy, principally that of Plato. But he eventually found that Christianity answered the great questions of life and existence better than did the pagan philosophers, so he converted. He wrote famous apologies, defenses of the Christian faith, to the Roman emperor and to the senate. Because of his unwavering dedication to his faith, he was beheaded in Rome in the year 165.

    “My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God,” says the Psalmist today. All of us have that thirst for God built into our very existence and are called to live our faith with conviction, as did Saint Justin. We might never be called to physically lay down our lives, but we too are called to give our lives, our comforts, our standing in the community, our reputation among our peers, for the faith. Today we pray for the grace to live what we believe and to be an everlasting remembrance.

  • The Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    This feast is one of the reasons I love the Blessed Virgin. Having given her fiat – her “yes” – to God, she now shows concern for her elder relative who is also with child. She goes to visit her in a great act of hospitality, which is one of the virtues Paul admonished the Romans to follow in our first reading today. Perhaps because of her faith and her great concern for Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s own child begins to rejoice in the womb, recognizing his Lord and the great woman who would bring him to human life.

    While we don’t have an exact account of what happened at that visit, we do have the Church’s recollection of its spirit, as told through Luke the Evangelist. The whole feeling of this Gospel story is one of great joy, which is perhaps why this is one of the joyful mysteries of the holy Rosary. Both Elizabeth and Mary represent the Church in the telling of the story. Because just as Elizabeth was moved by the faith and generosity of Mary, so the Church continues to be edified by her example of faith and charity. And just as Mary rejoiced in what God was doing in her life, so the Church continues to rejoice at the mighty acts of God in every person, time and place.

    The Gospel reading ends with the great song called the Magnificat which is Mary’s song of praise to God for the wonders he has done throughout all time, but also in her own life. We too should make that our own song as we continue to be overjoyed by the great acts of God, shepherding us all through our own lives, and intervening in our world and society to bring grace to a world darkened by sin. We, too, can pray with Mary, “From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.”

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • Thursday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the voices that can never be silenced in us is the voice that cries out seeking to see. We spend our whole lives crying out as Bartimaeus in today’s Gospel: “Master, I want to see.” And just as the crowd and even the disciples could not silence his desires, so nothing will silence that desire in our own hearts and souls. We want to see the truth, we want to see Jesus, we want to see the world as it really is, we want to see our way out of our current messed-up situation, we want to see the end of suffering, we want to see peace, we want to see wholeness, and maybe most of all we want to see ourselves. As we really are. As God sees us. This is our lifelong task.

    The writer of our first reading had this idea in mind when he said:

    You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
    a holy nation, a people of his own,
    so that you may announce the praises of him
    who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

    God is calling us all out of darkness today. He wants us to see him, and ourselves, as we were created to be. He wants us to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own. He created us from glory. And we won’t experience that glory until we go through the rather painful experience of bringing all of our darkness out into the light. Maybe we’re not ready for that yet. But we can pray to become ready, and to be open. We can pray in the words of Bartimaeus: “Master, I want to see!”