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  • Saturday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When time runs short, we often worry about the silliest things. Maybe the reason for that is we don’t know what to do, so taking care of the small stuff makes it seem like we are getting someplace. Only we’re not. For example, I have this kind of big impending move to take care of in less than a month.  But the obstacle is that I hate to pack.  So I’m making myself do at least one packing project a week.  So far the projects have been pretty small.  So, at this rate, I’ll need a year to make my move!

    For the Sadducees, the silliness surrounded what seems like a game of trivial pursuit or some early version of a math story problem gone bad. If a woman married each of seven brothers, only to have them die before they could have children, whose wife would she be in the afterlife? I think the more important question would be, if the first six brothers died before they could have children, why would the seventh one marry her in the first place? Now that’s a question worth asking!

    And Jesus makes it clear that the answer to their question involves focusing on what’s really important. And that is eternal life. Now the Sadducees didn’t believe in life after death. One of my professors used to tell us that that’s why they were sad, you see. But Jesus’ message to them is that they are dead wrong on their belief that there is no afterlife, and it’s time they got it right. The most important thing worth striving for is eternal life, and Jesus is there to give it to them, and us, if we will but ask the right questions and live the Gospel.

    So as the year nears its end and time is running short, we have to ask the right questions and attend to the important stuff. Maybe this involves reprioritizing our preparations for Thanksgiving or spending less time in the mall Christmas shopping, and spending more time with our families, or in prayer, so that the real message of the end of the year – eternal life through the incarnation of our Savior – can be first in our minds and hearts.

  • Friday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Just like John in today’s reading from the Revelation, we who are followers of Jesus are called to take in the Scriptures and internalize them.  And just as for him, they will first taste sweet: our initial experience with God, or even a fresh new experience of him will often be a pleasant encounter.  But eventually, the word becomes sour in our stomach as we realize what the word means for us.  We may have to change in some way, or end a toxic relationship, or take a leap of faith, or attack a pattern of sin.  None of that is easy, but like the Psalmist, we may remember what Jesus has in store for those who do his will and pray, “How sweet to my taste is your promise!”

  • Thursday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Our worshipping in these last days of the Church year is often difficult, I think.  And the reason is that these readings are just hard to hear.  The readings from Revelation this week have been confusing, to say the least, and maybe even a little frightening.  And even if we could ignore the fright of the Revelation, well the Gospel is a bit more violent this morning than we’d like to experience at 8:00 in the morning, I think.

    But there is a spiritual principle at work here.  We are being called to mindfulness.  If during this liturgical year we’ve been a little lax, or even have become complacent, these readings are calling us to wake up lest we miss what God is doing.  God is bringing the whole world to its fulfillment, and we are called to be witnesses of it.  We dare not be like those who missed the time of their visitation.  We have been given the wonderful gift of Christ’s presence in our lives all year long, and we are asked to look back at where that wonderful gift has taken us.

    And if we haven’t come as far as we should, then we are called to wake up and realize what’s slipping away from us.  We must not be left out of the kingdom, all our hopes smashed to the ground, all because we didn’t recognize that our greatest hope was right in front of us all the time.  We know the time is running short.  The days are shorter, and night approaches more quickly than we’d like.  The leaves have gone from the trees.  The nip in the air has turned to cold and even frost; and we know there are very few days until we see some snowflakes.  These are the physical manifestations of creation groaning to come to its fulfillment.

    If the coming winter leaves us empty and aching for warmth, then these final days of the Church year might find us also aching for the warmth of the kingdom, that kingdom we were created to live in all our days.  Let us not be like Jerusalem; we dare not miss the time of our visitation!

  • Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Lord, please let me see.”

    What a wonderful prayer. Certainly in the blind beggar’s life, that prayer was for the gift of physical sight. But maybe that’s not the kind of sight we need. Maybe the kind of sight we need in our lives goes a bit deeper inside.

    There are those of us going through difficulties in life: problems at work, family issues, personal stuff. These kinds of things can be so frustrating, especially when there is no end in sight. The blindness here is that maybe we can’t see the solution. Perhaps we’ve prayed so often about it, and nothing seems to change. “Lord, please let me see…” the solution to the problem, and give me the grace to see the answer to my prayers.

    There are those of us who have to deal with difficult people in life. Whether they be co-workers, neighbors, or even members of our own family, the issues between us may cloud any ability to see God’s work in our brothers and sisters. “Lord, please let me see…” other people through your eyes, eyes that see the goodness of others and not just the obstacles between us.

    Many have to deal with a pattern of sin in their lives.  It could be a fault that has plagued them for much of their adult lives.  In that kind of circumstance, it can be hard to see an end to the cycle of sin; it can even be hard to see God’s presence in our lives.  “Lord, please let me see…” myself as you created me, and your grace at work in my life to lead me to the path of life eternal.

    Whatever it is we are frustrated about, we can bring that to our Lord today. As we offer our gifts, may we also offer our frustrations and give them to the Lord. And, as we receive our Lord in the Eucharist today, may we our prayer for grace be the words of the blind beggar: “Lord, please let me see.”

  • Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr

    Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr

    Today’s readings

    

    Saint Josaphat was born in what is now Poland to Orthodox parents.  He later became a Basilian monk, and was chosen bishop of Vitebsk, in what is now Russia.  His task was to bridge the divide between the Roman and Orthodox Church, but this was not easy, because the Orthodox monks did not want union with Rome; they feared interference in liturgy and customs.  But over time, using synods and other instruction, he was able to win many of the Orthodox in that area to the union.

    But the fight was far from over.  A dissident faction of the church was formed, and they fomented opposition to Josaphat.  Eventually the mob murdered him and threw his body into a river.  The body was recovered and is now buried in St. Peter’s basilica.  Josaphat is the first saint of the Eastern Church to be canonized by Rome.

    Sometimes our message of peace is not one that will be accepted readily.  We may have to give more than we know in order to make peace a reality.  Through the intercession of St. Josophat, let us bring the Prince of Peace to the world.

  • Saint Martin of Tours, Veterans’ Day

    Saint Martin of Tours, Veterans’ Day

    Today’s readings

    I want you to think about heroes.  Think about who you might say is one of your heroes.  Maybe it’s an athlete, someone who is great at baseball or football or hockey, or whatever sport you like.  Maybe it’s someone in your family who has done great things and has helped you in some way.  Whoever our heroes are, they are people who make us think of becoming more than what we are, people who help us to become who we are meant to be.

    Today we have the opportunity to celebrate some heroes.  One hero is today’s saint, Saint Martin of Tours, who was actually a veteran and a fierce defender of our faith.  The other heroes are our nation’s veterans, who have fought in wars to protect us and to protect our freedoms.

    St. Martin of Tours is a fitting saint to pray for veterans today. His father was a veteran and he himself became a soldier and served his country faithfully, even though that was not what he most wanted to do.  But, at fifteen he entered the army and served under the Emperors Constantius and Julian. While in the service he met a poor, naked beggar at the gates of the city who asked for alms in Christ’s Name. Martin had nothing with him except his weapons and soldier’s mantle; but he took his sword, cut the mantle in two, and gave half to the poor man. During the following night Christ appeared to him clothed with half a mantle and said, “Martin, the catechumen, has clothed me with this mantle!”

    During this time, Martin became a catechumen, someone preparing to become a Catholic, and he wanted to focus on doing that. He asked his superiors in the army, “I have served you as a soldier; now let me serve Christ. Give the bounty to those who are going to fight. But I am a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful for me to fight.” After a time, he asked for and received release from military service.  Having received his release, he became a monk and served God faithfully. As a soldier of Christianity now, he fought valiantly against paganism and appealed for mercy to those accused of heresy. He was made a bishop, also not his first choice of things to become, and served faithfully in that post.

    On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month of the year 1918, an armistice was signed, ending the “war to end all wars” – World War I.  November 11 was set aside as Armistice Day in the United States to remember the sacrifices that men and women made during the war in order to ensure a lasting peace. In 1938 Congress voted Armistice Day as a legal holiday, but World War II began the following year. Armistice Day was still observed after the end of the Second World War. In 1953 townspeople in Emporia, Kansas called the holiday Veterans Day in gratitude to the veterans in their town. Soon after, Congress passed a bill renaming the national holiday to Veterans Day. Today, we remember those who have served for our country in the armed forces in our prayers.

    On this Veterans Day, we honor and pray for veterans of our armed forces who have given of themselves in order to protect our country and its freedoms. We pray especially for those who have died in battle, as well as for those who have been injured physically or mentally during their military service. We pray in thanksgiving for all of our freedoms, gained at a price, and pray that those freedoms will always be part of our way of life.

    I found a prayer for veterans which I adapted to be part of our prayer today.  As I pray it, think of someone you know who may be a veteran, one of the veterans here today, or perhaps is currently serving in the armed forces. Maybe that veteran is even you. If you don’t have anyone particular to pray for, ask God to hear this prayer on behalf of a veteran who has no one to pray for them. So let us pray:

    God of peace,
    we pray for those who have served our nation
    and who laid down their lives
    to protect and defend our freedom.

    We pray for those who have fought,
    whose spirits and bodies are scarred by war,
    whose nights are haunted by memories
    too painful for the light of day.

    We pray for those who serve us now,
    especially for those in harm’s way.
    Shield them from danger
    and bring them home safely.

    Turn the hearts and minds
    of our leaders and our enemies
    to the work of justice and a harvest of peace.

    You are the One who calls us to peace,
    who gives us your everlasting peace.
    So let the peace you left us,
    the peace you gave us,
    be the peace that sustains,
    the peace that saves us.

    We ask this through Christ our Lord.

    Amen.

  • Pope St. Leo the Great, doctor of the Church

    Pope St. Leo the Great, doctor of the Church

    Today’s readings

    Pope St. Leo the Great was known to be a wonderful administrator of the Church.  But far from being caught up in purely administrative matters, he was also a very spiritual and prayerful man, many of whose great writings have become part of the lifeblood of our Church.  He was elected to the papacy in the year 440, and his work included extensive defense of the church against the heresies of Pelagianism and Manichaeism and others; he also played the role of peacemaker, defending Rome against attacks by the Barbarians, and very significantly helped to settle a controversy in the Church of the east on the two natures – human and divine – of Christ.  His work on that issue was promulgated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

    St. Leo held that holiness consisted in doing the work we were called upon to do in our station in life, but not so much that it costs us our relationship with Christ.  Prayer and spiritual growth are also required of the disciple, and holiness consists of doing both work and prayer in proper balance.  Following that way, live peaceably and graciously toward all, as St. Paul calls us to do in today’s first reading, and we can trust that God will be pleased with our efforts and bless our lives.

  • Monday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s gospel reading deals with a major theme of Jesus, and that is sin and forgiveness.  That was why he came here to earth, as we well know, and today he tells us why, while sin can run rampant, it will never have the final say.

    “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur,” he says.  And don’t we know how right he is!  Anyone who has had to deal with some pattern of sin knows how futile it can sometimes be to battle it.  Just when you think you have made progress, something or someone comes along, presses the wrong button in us, and – just like that – we are back in our sins again.  The inevitability of sin is one of the scourges of this present life, and it is the root cause of so many of the ills that plague us, ills like depression, disease, war, terrorism, death – all these and many more owe their very existence to the inevitability of sin.

    Sin has to be rebuked.  We have to be open to accountability, and to the warning of our brothers or sisters to get us back on the right track.  Kind of like when my doctor told me that my asthma would get a lot better if I lost a little weight.  I didn’t like hearing that, but I knew he was right, and if I want to be able to breathe better, I need to listen to him.  So when a brother or sister urges us to turn away from sin, blessed are we when we are open to their counsel.

    But as inevitable as sin is, Jesus tells us, it never gets to have the final word.  Forgiveness does.  Mercy does.  Love does.  If a brother or sister “wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him,” Jesus tells us.  Because that’s what he is about.  The only thing Jesus came to do was to forgive sins.  That’s what opens to us the gates of heaven and the promise of eternity.  And our job is to keep those gates open for each other, even if we have been wronged seven times in a day.

    Sin is rampant and it can dog us day in and day out.  But it doesn’t get to mar our eternity.  Not if we let Jesus do the one thing he came to do: to forgive our sins.  And of course, that means we have to forgive as we have been forgiven as well.

  • The Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time [C]

    The Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time [C]

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever thought how depressing life would be if this is all there was? Do you know people who would say that they believe there is nothing else after this life?  I’m not sure how people like that can get out of bed in the morning, let alone keep on living day after day. Questions about life and death and last things and life after the last things are what’s going on in the Church’s mind and imagination in these last days of the Church year.

    It’s little wonder these questions grab us in these waning days of the year. The trees are losing their foliage. The daylight hours are getting shorter. The air is a bit colder. We can sense there is a change approaching, and perhaps it isn’t one that we look forward to. Even with the festive atmosphere of the upcoming holidays, or perhaps even because of that, many of us feel depressed or blasé, and the festivity of the holiday season only serves to highlight it for us. Please God, let there be something more.

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

    And that’s exactly what the Sadducees were doing.. The Sadducees, we are told, were a group of religious authorities that taught there was no resurrection. So these Sadducees come to Jesus and seem to have an earnest question. They speak of a woman seven times widowed and wonder whose wife she will be in the resurrection of the dead. Except that their question wasn’t earnest at all. Clearly they were out to discredit Jesus, even embarrass him. So you think there will be a resurrection, they say, well then, what about this?

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

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

    We may be tempted to settle for something less, but we know there is something so much better in store for us. There is something that will fill up our desires once and for all, and that something – or rather someone –  is Jesus Christ. It’s not going to be our pride, boasting of our elaborate wisdom or ability to take care of ourselves. It’s not going to be a little pork, or giving in to whatever temptation comes our way to take us off the path. It’s not going to be alcohol, or drugs, or unhealthy relationships or Dr. Phil or Oprah or anyone else. It’s only going to be Jesus, only Jesus who will fill up the desires that touch us to the core of who we are.

    The Church in these waning days of the Church year would never deny that there is suffering in the world. But she will encourage us to open up our desires to be filled with our Savior who comes not to make our suffering go away, but instead to fill it up with his presence. There is something more, and we can expect to be filled up with it when we realize that the fit for the hole we have in our hearts is Jesus Christ.

    Our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. To him all are alive. So in these last days of the year, if we find ourselves desiring peace, desiring wholeness, desiring comfort, desiring love, desiring fulfillment, or desiring anything else, that’s okay. Because what we’re really desiring is Christ, and he is always there to fill us beyond our wildest imaginings.

  • Friday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today, the psalmist rejoices at having reached the house of the Lord: “And now we have set foot within your gates, O Jerusalem,” he prays.  That reminds me that, in those days, a journey was a serious undertaking.  One didn’t just hop in the car and get to church in five or ten minutes.  The journey to the temple in Jerusalem was probably a long one, on rough, dusty roads, in difficult weather, mostly on foot although one might have ridden an animal.  It was difficult and would take a long time.  For those looking forward to a pilgrimage to the temple, the expectation was probably palpable, and so we can understand the psalmist singing with joy as he arrives – finally! – in that holy place.

    The psalmists goal was the temple in Jerusalem.  Our goal is the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, promised to us by our God as a place where there will be no more mourning or pain, but only basking in the light of the Lord.  Our journey to get there is also long and difficult.  We have to make our way along difficult roads, with all kinds of pitfalls, many obstacles, and much that would keep us from attaining our goal.  We may get frustrated with our slow progress, or even the many times when we lose our footing and end up in places where we’d rather not be.  Sin and frailty seem to claw at us, dragging us down yet again.

    But the goal is always there, and we have our lives to travel that long and winding road.  We yearn for the courts of the house of the Lord just as much as did the psalmist.  We entrust our goal to God’s hands and pray to be open to the grace that he alone can give us to guide us safely there.  Progress along the way may seem slow, but there is progress, and one day, we will get to sing with that psalmist in the new Jerusalem, as we all go rejoicing together to the house of the Lord.