Caritas Christi Urget Nos

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  • Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Pride and presumption are insidious sins. They make any kind of grace impossible, for they even deny that grace is needed or wanted. If we have no need of a Savior, then no relationship with God is even possible. And not having a relationship with God is something we call “hell.” So the disciple doesn’t get to harbor pride and doesn’t get to presume that God will take care of her or him. Instead the disciple must be very mindful of God, and must constantly nurture the relationship in such a way that they are caught up in the very life of God.

    In our first reading, the Hebrew exiles in Babylon realized how far they were from this kind of relationship, and with the prophet Baruch, they pray a prayer of repentance. Too bad the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida, in our Gospel reading, didn’t do the same. They needed to. They were totally unmindful of God, and they refused to repent. Which is inconceivable given the mighty deeds Jesus had been doing among them. Jesus calls them to task on it. We don’t know if that had an effect on them. But we can be like that too.  Sometimes we are so presumptuous of God’s mercy and favor that we refuse to repent of the things that separate us from Him. We need to be open to change.

    The disciple is called to humbly place himself or herself in God’s mercy, acknowledging dependence on a Savior who has loved us into existence and sustains those who follow him. The disciple shuns pride and presumption, and humbly prays with the Psalmist, “For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.”

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading, the prophet Zechariah proposes a very hopeful outcome for efforts at evangelization, if we take up that ministry with zeal.  Many cities, many peoples, powerful nations will look to Jerusalem and God’s people because they know God is with them.  That’s what we would want too, wouldn’t we?  We would want all people to turn away from whatever philosophy or false god they worship and come to the Lord, who is the Way to eternal life.

    Interestingly, the apostles take a different approach to evangelization.  When the people of the Samaritan village would not welcome him, because he was on the way to Jerusalem, they want to call down fire on the village.  As if they could; really it’s a rather humorous exchange.  Jesus instead decides to continue the way to Jerusalem and let them be.  He continues to foster the hope that even the Samaritans will see the truth and turn to the Lord.

    So we have to be careful about our own approach to evangelization.  We are all called to evangelize according to our vocation and state in life.  We are called to witness to the Gospel by the way we live our lives, by the words we speak, and the deeds we do.  People have to see authenticity in us so that they will be intrigued to follow Jesus and have hope of eternal life.

    Today, may we have the confidence of the Psalmist who sings, “God is with us.”  May we live that conviction so boldly that others will want to take hold of our garments and follow the Lord with us.

  • The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes it’s hard to accept that something is in our best interest when we first hear of it.  I can remember often growing up not wanting to do something like go on a retreat or join the youth group, but my parents giving me that gentle nudge to do it anyway.  And then of course, when I went, I’d always have a really great experience.

    I always think of that when I hear this week’s Gospel reading.  I think it’s a pretty human thing to resist what’s good for us, especially when it means extending ourselves into a new experience, or when it means having to inconvenience ourselves or disrupt our usual schedule.  We don’t want to go out into the field and work today, or go help at the soup kitchen, or go teach religious education, or go to the parish mission, or get involved in a ministry at the church, or join a Bible Study, or whatever it may be that’s in front of us.

    I remember specifically an experience I had when I first started in seminary.  I became aware that some of the guys, as their field education, were serving as fire chaplains.  That scared the life out of me, and I said to myself that I’d never be able to do that.  Two and a half years later, one of my friends at seminary asked me to join him as a fire chaplain.  God has a terrific sense of humor!  I told him I didn’t think I had the ability to do that, but he persuaded me to pray about it.  Well, when I prayed about it, of course the answer was yes, do it.  And so I did, and found it one of the most rewarding spiritual experiences of my time in seminary.

    People involved in ministries here at the Church can probably tell you the same kinds of stories.  Times when they have been persuaded to do something they didn’t want to.  They could probably tell you how much they grew as people, how much they enjoyed the experience.  When we extend ourselves beyond our own comfort level for the glory of God, we are always rewarded beyond what we deserve.  And that’s grace; that’s the work of God in our lives.

    What’s important for us to see here is this: God extends his mercy and forgiveness and grace and calling to us all the time. We may respond, I think, in one of four ways. First, we may say no, and never change, never become what God created us to be. This happens all the time because we as a people tend to love our sins and love our comfort more than we love God. We would rather not be inconvenienced or challenged to grow.

    We might also say no, but later be converted. That’s a little better. Let’s be clear: there is no time like the present, and we never know if we have tomorrow. But God’s grace doesn’t stop working on us until the very end. So we can have hope because God does not give up on us.

    We might say yes, with all good intentions of following God, being in relationship with him, and doing what he asks of us. But perhaps we get distracted by life, by work, by our sins, by relationships that are impure, or whatever. And then we never actually become what we’re supposed to be.

    Or we might actually say yes and do it, with God’s grace. We might be people who are always open to grace and work on our relationship with God. Then that grace can lead to a life of having become what God wanted of us, and that puts us on the path to sainthood, which is where we are all supposed to be.  The model for that, of course, would be the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was able to say “yes” to God’s plan for her and the world right away.

    Today’s Gospel is a good occasion for a deep examination of conscience. Where are we on the spectrum? Have we nurtured our relationship with God and said yes to his call, or are we somewhere else? And if we’re somewhere else, what is it that we love more than God? What do we have to do to get us on the right path? We know the way of righteousness. We know the path to heaven. We just have to change our minds and change our hearts so that we might follow Jesus Christ, our way to eternal life.

  • Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels

    Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels

    Mass for the school children.

    The world can be a confusing and scary place some times. Sometimes when we go on a journey, we lose our way and get loSaint Sometimes people get sick, or maybe they get hurt, or maybe they are blind or deaf. The world can be a lonely place for those who are sick. Then too, there is danger in lots of places, and sometimes we don’t feel very safe. And sometimes we don’t know the truth, or hear any good news. The truth is, lots of times, we need someone to help us. Sometimes we need to hear from an angel.

    Today is the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, all of them angels.  Archangels, actually. Angels are messengers: that’s the meaning of the Greek word angelos, from which we get our word “angel.”  Angels are beings that bring God’s message to us on earth, and who intercede for us in heaven.

    Some angels are guides.  We read about Saint Raphael in the Book of Tobit in the Old Testament. Saint Raphael appeared as a young man and accompanied Tobiah as he journeyed a long distance to get his father’s property and bring it back. Tobit, his father, was very worried about Tobiah making the journey, so he was looking for someone to help him. Raphael, posing as the young man, went with Tobiah and brought him home safely, along with his father’s property. Saint Raphael is the patron saint of travelers.

    Some angels bring healing. The name Raphael actually means, “God heals.” Tobit, Tobiah’s father, was blind for a long time. So, along with bringing back Tobit’s property, Raphael and Tobiah brought back an ointment made of fish gall. Tobiah blew into his father’s eyes and smeared the medicine on them, and Tobit was able to see his son again! Raphael also healed a woman named Sarah. She was married seven times, but each of her husbands died on their wedding night, and Sarah thought she would be alone for the rest of her life. Raphael arranged for Tobiah and Sarah to be married, and they both lived very happily. Saint Raphael is also the patron saint of healing, especially of the blind.

    Some angels are defenders. In the book of Revelation, Satan was trying to take over heaven and accused all of God’s followers, good people, of all kinds of crimes. Saint Michael fought against Satan and had him thrown out of heaven. He brought victory to God by being strong in the battle against Satan and all evil powers, and he still defends people against evil to this day by his prayers. Because he defends people, Saint Michael is the patron saint of police officers, and because he is powerful against evil, he is the special patron of the Pope.

    Some angels are messengers. Saint Gabriel was the angel who came to tell Mary that she was going to be the Mother of Jesus. In Saint Luke’s Gospel, Saint Gabriel also comes to Saint Joseph, who was engaged to Mary, and reassured him. Joseph knew that he wasn’t the father of Jesus, so he was going to quietly call off the wedding. But Gabriel came and assured him that the baby Mary was going to have was from God, and because of what Gabriel told him, Saint Joseph stayed with Mary and became to earthly father of Jesus. Gabriel is known for the news that he brings, and is the patron saint of messengers, postal workers, communications workers and broadcasters.

    Angels still work among us, because we need to hear God’s message too. Saint Raphael is still here, keeping us safe when we go on long journeys and, more importantly, helping us to stay on the path to God. He might be here, too, working through the hands of doctors and nurses and physical therapists, and all kinds of healers, to bring sick people back to health. Saint Michael is still here, working through police officers and fire fighters and all kinds of public safety people, in order to keep our communities safe, and Saint Michael also works through those who defend the Church against all kinds of evil. Saint Gabriel is still here among us, telling us how to follow Jesus; and he’s working through our parents and teachers and priests and ministers when they bring us news about God.

    We know a little bit about all these angels because of the stories we read about them in the Bible. But I think the angels are still working among us, guiding us, healing us, defending us, and bringing us good news. The angels are probably working through people you know. Maybe they’re even working through you whenever you help someone else. The truth is, I don’t think we would live very safe and happy lives if it wasn’t for the angels among us. Today we should thank God for Saints Raphael, Michael and Gabriel, and for all the people who cooperate with those angels in all their work.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Is it time for you to dwell in your own paneled houses,
    while this house lies in ruins?

    During this week, we have been hearing about the desire to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem after the people returned from exile.  The Persian Empire with its kings Cyrus and Darius, was favorable to encouraging and even funding some of the building of the temple.  But in today’s first reading, we hear that the people are less excited to do that than the pagan kings of the Persian Empire!

    The prophet Haggai takes them to task for being comfortable in their own houses and rebuilding their own lives and saying “It’s not time to rebuild the Temple.”  This sentiment shows the underlying spiritual malaise of the people.  Now that they are out of exile and things are good, they don’t really need God for anything right now and are not giving him his due.

    Would that that kind of thing was limited to the people of Haggai’s time.  But we know it’s not.  We know how quickly we turn to God in times of trouble, but when things are going well, we ignore our spiritual lives and don’t give God much thought. 

    If we are to be true disciples, we have to be in relationship with God, in bad times and in good.  We need to constantly rebuild his house, to make that home for him in our hearts, to live with him in our homes and proclaim him in our community by the way we live our lives. 

    Friends, it’s always time to rebuild God’s house.

  • The Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”  So says the wisdom-writer Sirach in today’s first reading.  His words set up well the Gospel today, and the overall emphasis of forgiveness as a powerful tool for the disciple.  The disciple would do well to abandon wrath and anger, and hold fast to forgiveness: eagerly seeking it for himself, and freely giving it to others. 

    But forgiveness, sadly, doesn’t seem to come as naturally to us as it does to our God.  Sinners though we are, we seem to always gravitate toward wrath and anger.  You can see it well in just about every corner of our world right now.  We don’t have interesting conversations about political issues any more: we have wrath and anger.  All we seem to see is wrath and anger, and I don’t know about you, but I’m sure weary of it.  Well, friends, the way that we move forward has to do with forgiveness.  Those who hug wrath and anger tight will never be at peace; peace only comes from forgiving and letting go of the poison.  So how do we forgive?

    In the Gospel, Peter wants the Lord to spell out the rule of thumb: how often must we forgive another person who has wronged us?  Peter offers what he thinks is magnanimous: seven times.  Seven times is a lot of forgiveness.  Think about it, how exasperated do we get when someone wrongs us over and over?  Seven times was more than the law required, so Peter felt like he was catching on to what Jesus required in living the Gospel.  But that’s not what Jesus was going for: he wanted a much more forgiving heart from his disciples: not seven times, but seventy-seven times!  Even if we take that number literally, which we shouldn’t, that’s more forgiveness than we can begin to imagine.  But the number here is just to represent something bigger than ourselves: constant forgiveness.  The real answer to Peter’s question is that we don’t number forgiveness: just as our God forgives us as many times as we come to him in repentance, so we should forgive others who do that with us.

    The parable that Jesus tells to illustrate the story is filled with interesting little details.  The servant in the story owes the master a huge amount of money.  Think of the biggest sum you can imagine someone owing another person and add a couple of zeroes to the end of it.  It’s that big.  He will never live long enough or earn enough money to repay the master, no matter what efforts he puts forth.  So the master would be just in having him and everything he owned and everyone he cared about sold.  It still wouldn’t repay the debt, but it would be more than he would otherwise get.  But the servant pleads for mercy, and the master gives it.  In fact, he does more than he’s asked to do: he doesn’t just give the servant more time to pay, he forgives the entire loan!  That’s incredible mercy!

    On the way home, however, the servant forgets about who he is: a sinner who has just been forgiven a huge debt, and he encounters another servant who owes him a much smaller sum than he owed the master – for us it would be like ten or twenty dollars.  But the servant has not learned to forgive as he has been forgiven: he hands the fellow servant over to be put into debtor’s prison until he can repay the loan.  But that in itself is a humorous little detail.  In prison, how is he going to repay the loan?  He can’t work, right?  So basically the fellow servant is condemned for the rest of his life.  For twenty dollars.

    We don’t have to do a lot of math or theological thinking to see the injustice here.  The servant has been forgiven something he could never repay, no matter how long he lived.  But he was unwilling to give that same forgiveness to his fellow servant; he was unwilling to give him even a little more time to repay the loan, which the other servant certainly could have done.  That kind of injustice is something that allows a person to condemn him or herself for the rest of eternity.  The disciple is expected to learn to forgive and is expected to forgive as he or she has been forgiven.  “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  We can’t just say those words when we pray and then withhold mercy from our sisters and brothers; we actually have to forgive those who trespass against us.

    We have been forgiven so much by God.  So how willing have we then been to forgive others?  Our reflection today might take us to the people or institutions that have wronged us in some way.  Can we forgive them?  Can we at least ask God for the grace to be forgiving?  I always tell people that forgiveness is a journey.  We might not be ready to forgive right now, but we can ask for the grace to be move in that direction.  Jesus didn’t say it would be easy, but we have to stop sending people to debtor’s prison for the rest of their lives if we are going to honor the enormous freedom that God’s forgiveness has won for us.

    Every time we forgive someone, every time we let go of an injustice that has been done to us, the world is that much more peaceful.  We may well always have war and the threat of terrorism with us.  But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.  That doesn’t mean we have to participate in it.  It certainly doesn’t mean we have to perpetuate it.  Real peace, real change, starts with us.  If we choose to forgive others, maybe our own corner of the world can be more just, more merciful.  And if we all did that, think of how our world could be significantly changed.

    As the Psalmist sings today: “The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.”  So should the Lord’s disciples be.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I’ve heard it said that the only one of the disciples Jesus called that day who was actually fit for his job was Judas Iscariot, and we all know how that worked out. We don’t know what God considers qualification for discipleship, we just know that somehow, for some reason, we have all been called to do whatever it is that we are meant to do in life. We probably don’t or didn’t have all the skills necessary to accomplish it, but that’s okay. If we were able to accomplish everything on our own then we wouldn’t need God, wouldn’t need a Savior, which would be a terrible way to live.

    In just the same way, we are all called to be part of God’s kingdom by making his presence known in what we do or say. We may or may not be able to heal diseases. Maybe we can’t cast out demons, at least in the way Jesus did. Feeding the hungry with miraculous actions may well be beyond us. But he does give us power to do what he needs us to do. And so it may be enough to look in on a sick neighbor, or sit with someone who is troubled, or make a meal for someone who hasn’t had a good one in a long time.

    We tend to think of discipleship as something huge, something way beyond us. But every one of us is called to take it up. As Saint Teresa of Calcutta once wrote, “Very humble work, that is where you and I must be. For there are many people who can do big things. But there are very few people who can do the small things.” Maybe our little work won’t change the world, but it can make things better in our small part of the world, and that may be what we’re called to do.

    Thank God that we both need and have his presence in our lives, and that he has called us all to share in the work of discipleship in some way.

  • The Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So today our Gospel, at the end of it, talks to us a bit about what prayer looks like.  I have to say, when the Scriptures talk about prayer, I get a little uneasy.  Not because I don’t like to pray, or think prayer is a bad thing.  But more because I think mostly we misunderstand prayer, and usually a brief mention in the readings like we have today can do more harm than good.  The line almost at the end of the Gospel reading is the culprit: “if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.”

    Really? Anything? I don’t know about you, but I personally can think of examples – plenty of examples – of times where I had prayed with friends or family for something and ended up not getting it.  You can probably think of examples too.  People tell me all the time, “Father, I have prayed and prayed about (fill in the blank), and I never get any answer, it doesn’t seem like God even hears me.”  Have you ever thought that?  Well, if so, you are not alone; lots of us have.  So what are we to make of this?  Why would Jesus make a promise like that if he wasn’t prepared to deliver on it?  Well, I’d like to make three points about prayer that maybe will help with that conundrum.

    First, in the line right after this, Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”  Notice how he says, “in my name.”  So it’s not like a couple of us can get together and pray for something crazy and hold God accountable for granting it.  That would be absurd; I’m sure you realize that.  If we’re gathered in anything less than the name of Jesus, we’re in the wrong place, and you don’t get what you want, or even what you need, when you’re in a place other than where Jesus is.

    Second, reflecting on that same line, I would point out the last phrase: “there am I in the midst of them.”  Sometimes God doesn’t answer all our prayers in the way we think he should, or in the way we would like him to.  God isn’t a divine vending machine.  But he definitely always answers them with his presence.  Sometimes that leads to resolution of a problem that is greater than we could have imagined.  Sometimes it makes us a stronger, more faith-filled person.  And sometimes the answer to a prayer means that we are the ones who have to change, not the situation, or the other people, or whatever is going on.  So the abiding presence of our God, most perfectly experienced in community, when two are three are gathered in his name, is the most important answer to every prayer.  And even if it’s the only answer, it surely is enough.

    I want to give an example from my recent illness.  The cardiologist wanted to do a full set of tests to see why I was in Afib.  I prayed and prayed that everything would be normal and I could go home.  Not so fast.  My stress test was abnormal and they wanted to do an angiogram.  I was, frankly, scared, and not real excited about the procedure.  But in my prayer, God reminded me that I had recently told him I wasn’t feeling my best and asked him to help me figure it out.  God said he was answering that prayer, and that I needed to trust him.  Again, it wasn’t how I would have wanted it to work out, but God was there for me in it.

    Finally – and I can’t say this often enough, nor stress it strongly enough – prayer is not a magic wand.  You might read in this brief little passage that all you have to do is pray for something and you get it.  “God help me win the lottery.”  Not so fast.  Prayer is always experienced in relationship: relationship with God and relationship with others.  That’s why this brief little passage mentions praying together, and praying in Jesus’ name.  Those are important points, and it’s best not to overlook them.

    Prayer is a relationship, prayer is work – sometimes hard work, prayer is a way of life for the disciple of Jesus.  We enter that relationship at our Baptism, and it’s our task as disciples to nurture that relationship our whole lives long.  When we put in that hard work, Jesus makes a promise on which he will always deliver: “there am I in the midst of them.”

  • The Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of my jobs before I went to seminary was in the sales department of a computer supply company.  In that job, they taught us that one of the first good rules of sales was never to ask a question to which you didn’t already know the answer.  I think teachers get taught a version of that principle as well.  I can’t help but think that Jesus’ question to the disciples in today’s Gospel falls under that heading.  Because Jesus obviously knew who he was.  But, as often happens in our interactions with Jesus, there’s something more going on.  And to figure out what that something more is, all you have to do is go back to the Gospels the last couple of weeks and see in them that Jesus is looking for people’s faith.  He was looking for faith from Peter when he called him to walk on the water.  He was impressed by the faith of the Canaanite woman last week as she persisted in her request that Jesus heal her daughter.  And now he queries the disciples’ faith – and ours too – as he asks us the million dollar question: “Who do you say that I am?”

    He actually starts with kind of a soft-ball question. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they recount all the obvious and probably much-discussed options of the time.  If there were bloggers and podcasters and talk radio people and cable news in that first century, they too might have said “John the Baptist” or “Elijah” or “Jeremiah” or “one of the prophets.”  So this is an easy question for the disciples to answer.  But when he gets to the lightning round question, “But who do you say that I am?” there’s a lot more silence.  And, as often happens with the disciples, it’s the impetuous Peter who blurts out the right answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

    But here’s the thing: that answer is going to require much of Saint Peter.  You see, his answer not just a liturgical formula or a scriptural title or even a profession of faith in the formal sense.  Jesus is looking for something that goes quite a bit deeper, something that comes from the heart, something integrated into Peter’s life.  He is looking for faith, not just spoken, but faith lived, and that’s why Peter’s answer is actually pretty dangerous.  If he is really convinced that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” then that conviction has to show itself in the way Peter lives.  He can’t just believe that and keep it under his hat.  If Jesus really is the One who is coming into the world, the Promised One of all generations, the salvation of the world, then Peter has to proclaim it from the rooftops.  And, as we know, that proclamation isn’t going to be very welcome.

    So I’m very sorry to tell you all this, but we have all gathered here on a very dangerous Sunday.  We too, you know, are being asked today, “But who do you say that I am?”  And Jesus isn’t asking us just to recite the Creed, the Profession of Faith.  That’s too easy; we do it all the time.  Jesus doesn’t want to know what you learned at Bible Study or what you read on Facebook.  He isn’t going for what’s in our heads.  Jesus is calling all of us today to dig deep, to really say what it is that we believe about him by the way that we act and the things that we do and the life that we live.  It’s a dangerous question for us, too, because what we believe about Jesus has to show forth in action and not just word.  Our life has to be a testament to our faith in God.  And if we cannot answer that question out of our faith today, if we are not prepared to live the consequences of our belief, then what are we doing here?

    Because if we really believe that Jesus is who he says he is, then we cannot just sit on the news.  Like Peter, we are going to have to proclaim it in word and deed.  In our homes, in our workplaces, in our schools, in our communities – we must be certain that everyone knows that we are Christians and that we are ready to live our faith.  That doesn’t mean that we need to interject a faith lesson into every conversation or bludgeon people with the Gospel.  But it does mean that we have to live that Gospel.  In St. Francis’s words, “Proclaim the Gospel at all times.  If necessary, use words.”  People absolutely need to be able to tell by noticing the way we live our lives that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.  If they can’t, then our faith is as tepid as the Pharisees’ and that’s certainly not praiseworthy!  Frankly, that too has consequences.

    Every part of our Liturgy has consequences for us believers.  “The Body of Christ.”  When we hear that proclamation and respond with our “Amen,” we are saying “yes, that’s what I believe.”  And if we believe that, if we are then filled with the Body of Christ by receiving Holy Communion, then we have made a statement that has consequences.  If we truly become what we receive, then how does that change the way that we work, the way that we interact with others?  “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”  “Thanks be to God.”  If we accept that command, then what?  What does it mean to glorify the Lord with our life?  Does it mean that we just do some kind of ministry here at Mass?  Not even close.  The first word in the command is “Go” and that means we have to glorify the Lord in our daily lives, in our business negotiations, in our community meetings, in our interactions with peers or the way that we mentor those who work for us.

    So if we really believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, then our lives just became a whole lot more complicated.  We may have to give up some of our habits and vices, we may have to make a concerted effort to be more aware of Christ in our daily lives, we may have to learn to treat other people as the Body of Christ.  We may have to do all this preaching in a hostile environment, because sometimes people don’t want to hear the Good News, or even be in the presence of it.  I think that’s more true today than ever.  The Gospel is met with hostility just because Christians preach it.  Therein lies the danger, because if we really believe, then we have to preach anyway.  Peter did, and it eventually led him to the cross.  What will it require of us?

    So I don’t know just how dangerous this will be for me or for you. I’m not even sure how we will all answer the question right now. But one thing is for sure, all of us sitting here today have the same one-question test that Peter and the disciples had. Who do you say that the Son of Man is? Be sure to take that to your prayer this week.

  • Friday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today we have a Pharisee who is a scholar of the law engaging Jesus in conversation.  Obviously, this scholar wasn’t really interested in Jesus’ point of view; he didn’t expect to learn anything from Jesus.  Instead he was looking for Jesus to say something incongruent with their way of thinking so that they could brand him as a heretic and get rid of him. 

    But Jesus knows that.  So what he gives this scholar, and all those who were listening in, was a very fair summary of the law and the prophets: love God and neighbor.  And he does it in a way that is familiar to them.  He quotes one of their most famous rules of life: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  Every Jew memorized that as the greatest and first commandment, so his addition of loving neighbor wasn’t going that far beyond what they had been taught.  And now they have nothing to say to him.

    But what is important here is that these words are for us.  All of our life needs to be centered around love.  If love is what summed up the law and the prophets, it is certainly what sums up the Gospel.  We too are called to love God who loved us first and loves us best.  We too are called to put that love into action by loving others, every person we come in contact with.  Some are easy to love, others not so much.  But we are called to love them anyway.

    How will we love others today?