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  • Friday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Well, with Thanksgiving yesterday, we’ve taken a bit of a break from the readings we have had all week from the book of Maccabees. Today we rejoin the story but it seems things are quite different. On Monday, we heard about King Antiochus Epiphanes and his repulsive plan to blot out the Jewish way of life, with all of its traditions and laws, and with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in favor of making alliance with the Gentiles and observing their base way of life and worshiping their many gods. On Tuesday and Wednesday, upright Jews are choosing death rather than give in to the demands that they eat pork and offer sacrifice to these gods. And today, there is great rejoicing. So what have we missed?

    What we missed was Thursday’s story about Mattathias and his sons, brave men who were filled with zeal for the law and for God. They put to death those who gave in to the demands of the Gentiles and they waged war on their oppressors. They were so successful that Judas and his brothers are able to celebrate victory today. Today, right on the heels of Thanksgiving, we see a thanksgiving celebration of another kind.

    All week long, the message we were getting was that there is something more. Maybe eating a little pork, or tossing a few grains of incense on a coal in worship of an alien god would save one’s life, but upright Jews like Eleazar, and the Maccabean brothers insisted that that life was not a life worth living. The something more to life is our relationship with God, and living without God is not really living at all. Living without God divorces us from who we are and forces us to live in a vacuum.

    Today we can celebrate that our identity as children of God is worth fighting for, or even dying for. We give thanks with Judas and his brothers that God has called us to be his children, that he will not abandon us, and that he gives us the grace not to abandon him and abandon who we are. God is faithful and sovereign and if we persevere, we can rededicate the Temple of our lives to the God who made us and gave us life.

  • For the Beauty of the Earth

    For the Beauty of the Earth

    For the Beauty of the Earth, arr. John Rutter

  • Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Well, the story we started to hear in yesterday’s first reading about Israel has festered a bit. You may remember yesterday that king Antiochus Epiphanes began to lead the people to follow the ways of the Gentiles: covering over their circumcision, attending schools in the Gentile way of life, abandoning the holy laws. Today it’s become ugly. Eleazar the scribe, in his nineties, is being forced to eat pork in violation of the law. When he refuses to do so, some of those who know and respect him urge him to pretend to eat it so as to escape punishment.

    But Eleazar is a man of wisdom, and he knows that if he pretends to violate the law to save his life, he will be leading others astray. Those of lesser years than he would be led to scandal and sin because of him. He may save his life, but theirs would be forever ruined on his account.

    What we are hearing in the book of Maccabees these days is that there is something more important than our own lives. Life is sacred and a wonderful gift, but it is completely meaningless if we live it at the cost of our spiritual lives. And when it comes right down to it, is that really living at all?

    Martyrs throughout the ages have given witness to the fact that there is something more, that this life is not all we have. For Eleazar it was the law. For Christian martyrs it is Jesus Christ. But it is always, always about God who made us for himself, who created us that we might live on this earth, but also live forever with him.

  • Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Terrible affliction was upon Israel. That’s what we’re told in today’s first reading. Why? Well, because they forgot they had a God who could take care of them. Because they were afflicted by the foreign occupation, they thought the best way to overcome that was by making alliance with their persecutors rather than remembering that God was faithful and would save them.

    Look at what they did. They introduced the way of living of the Gentiles. In days gone by, they would have thought such a thing completely repulsive. They became atheists in a sense: they rejected God completely. The gymnasium they erected wasn’t for sport, it was for learning. In those days a gymnasium was a kind of school that taught a complete way of life, one very different from the one God had laid out for them. They covered over the mark of their circumcision. The sign that they belonged to God was essentially blotted out so that they would know longer be known as God’s people. Then the evil Antiochus Epiphanes made the transformation complete by giving the Temple over to the worship of pagan gods. Israel’s crisis of faith caused them to reject the God who had loved them into creation.

    The point is, when life starts oppressing us and everything seems like it is going wrong, there are two choices for people of faith. One is the way Israel went under Antiochus Epiphanes. The other is the way of the blind beggar in today’s Gospel who humbly cried out: “Son of David, have pity on me” and “Lord, please let me see.” Please God let us all be able to see the big picture, the triumph of our God over the foe, the relief our hearts have longed for.

    The lament of the Psalmist today is the way the disciple chooses: “Indignation seizes me because of the wicked who forsake your law. Though the snares of the wicked are twined about me, your law I have not forgotten.”

  • Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever felt like the world was coming to an end? Because that’s just exactly how the original readers of Luke’s Gospel felt. The glorious Temple of Jerusalem, once stately and glimmering white and gold in the sunlight, now lay in ruins. Jerusalem was no more, and a world ended with it.

    But we modern hearers can’t possibly find this feeling foreign. We often feel, I think, like the world has come to an end. We all must deal with losses and endings each day. Family, friends and our communities experience various forms of dying and they are never easy. Cancer strikes down a former athlete; a marriage breaks up; an injury makes it impossible to keep a job; aging diminishes a once-vibrant person. And more. Our once proud church seems irrevocably damaged by scandal; our country is involved in a war that will affect generations to come; seeming low interest home mortgages become the cause for struggling families to lose the homes they worked long and hard to own.

    And when things like that happen, it’s hard to find words to express our sadness, fear, pain, and desertedness. It can even be hard to find words to raise in prayer when that happens. But Jesus knows this will happen to us and promises that if we persevere, we will gain our lives and God himself will give us a wisdom in speaking that cannot be refuted. What we experience as difficulties and painful endings, he sees as opportunities to witness to our faith in him.

    A popular Christian song speaks of being in the midst of the storm, amidst what seems like the end of the world. The refrain gives words that resonate with Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel:

    I’ll praise You in this storm
    And I will lift my hands
    For You are who You are
    No matter where I am
    Every tear I’ve cried
    You hold in Your hand
    You never left my side
    And though my heart is torn
    I will praise You in this storm
    (Casting Crowns, “Praise You in This Storm”)

    On the second-to-last Sunday of the Church year, it would have been wonderful for the Liturgy to tie up all the loose ends and give us a happy ending. But that’s not what we have here is it? Why? Because life isn’t that way. Jesus tells us as much today. But the message that we have is that no matter how messy things may be, we can praise our God who is with us even in the storm and promises to lift us up even when the world seems like it is coming to an end.

  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

    St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

    Today’s readings | Today’s saint

    cabrini1“We are unprofitable servants;
    we have done what we were obliged to do.”

    Those words could well have been said by Mother Cabrini. She was a humble woman of great faith and fortitude, who stayed with her mission. She was refused entrance to the religious order that had educated her. So she began working at an orphanage, eventually becoming a sister in the religious order that ran it. She later became their prioress. She went to New York intending to found an orphanage there. The house they were to use turned out not to be available, and the bishop advised her to return to Italy. But she stayed, and eventually founded not only that one orphanage, but 67 institutions dedicated to caring for the poor, the abandoned, the uneducated and the sick. She died at Columbus hospital in Chicago, which she also founded. She was the first American citizen to be canonized a saint.

    Frances Xavier Cabrini knew well that servanthood was not for one’s own glory, but instead for the glory of God. We disciples are called to do all sorts of things, and we would be well-advised not to look for glory for them in this lifetime. After all, we have done only what we were obliged to do, as the Gospel reminds us today. I think the words of encouragement that we must live and die for should be “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into your Master’s joy.” That’s what we all hope to hear on that great day when we stand before our Creator in judgment. What a glorious day that will be for those servants who considered themselves unprofitable, working with fortitude as did Mother Cabrini, and who did what they were obliged to do.

    Our first reading echoes that very sentiment. The just may indeed be mocked and chastised by people in the world. But those who persevere though those trials will be blessed by God, and their hope will be full of immortality. The souls of the just are always in the hands of God, and no torment can ever reach us there.

  • St. Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

    St. Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

    Today's readings

    "Increase our faith," indeed! How often have you had that same reaction to the marvels of God happening in your life? I think about the many times I have had the Spirit point out something I should have seen all along because it was right there in front of my face. Increase my faith, I pray.

    Because, as Jesus tells us today, there are many things that cause sin, and they will inevitably happen. But how horrible to be tangled up in them, right? Whether we've caused the occasion for sin, or have been the victim of it, what a tangled mess it is for us. Maybe we have made someone so angry that their response was sinful. Or perhaps we have neglected to offer help where it was needed and caused another person to find what they need in sinful ways. Or maybe we've said something scandalous or gossiped about another person and those who have overheard it have been brought to a lower place. None of that makes anyone involved happy; everyone ends up deficient in faith, hope and love in some way. The same is true if we were the ones to have fallen into the trap of an occasion of sin. Don't we just want to kick ourselves then?

    This is what the Psalmist was talking about when he prayed, "Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way." Now, if those are the only words you utter in prayer some day, rest assured they are probably well-chosen. Maybe some days that's all you can manage. I'll translate it for you in an even shorter way: "HELP!" Because when we are tangled up in sin, or brought low by suffering of some kind, maybe those are the only words we can manage. But God hears those words and answers them, because we can never fall so far that we are out of God's reach. Listen to some more of the Psalmist's excellent words today:

    Where can I go from your spirit?
    From your presence where can I flee?
    If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I sink to the nether world, you are present there.

    Maybe we can all agree as our homework today to take out our Bibles and read Psalm 139 a few times. Because you never know when you're going to need these words of hope and confidence. Increase our faith, Lord, guide us in the everlasting way.

  • Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    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? Do you feel sorry for them? These questions of 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. Last week, we celebrated our saints, those people who have fought the good fight and who have joined themselves to Christ in his overcoming of sin and death. And we mourned our dead, those souls who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and whose absence in our lives leaves a great hole that cannot seem to be filled up.

    And it’s no 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 Christmas 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.

    And it’s easy for us to console ourselves when we accept these shoddy ways of filling our desires. Hey, we’re only human, right? Well, that’s what we tell ourselves. And that would be helpful except for the fact that sin isn’t human at all. Filling our desires so poorly is the very least human thing we can do. Our desires aren’t wrong; it is not wrong to want something more. Filling that up with something less is the problem.

    The Sadducees had no idea, but that’s exactly what they were doing. The Sadducees, we are told, were a group of religious authorities that taught there was no resurrection. I had a professor in seminary that told us that that is why they were sad, you see. It’s a bad joke but I never forgot what the Sadducees were about! 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!

    St. Paul underscores this today in his letter to the Thessalonians. Listen to his opening instruction again:

    May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father,
    who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement
    and good hope through his grace,
    encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.

    There is something more, St. Paul tells us. There is something that will fill up our desires once and for all, and that something 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. She will not even allow us to tie up all the loose ends neatly so that we can march our way into the kingdom. 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. Jesus tells us as much in another place: “In this world you will have suffering.” But suffering isn’t all there is. 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 there’s nothing wrong with that.

  • Monday of the Thrity-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thrity-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
    How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!

    How often would we like to figure out what’s going on in God’s mind? Wouldn’t it be great to just be able to see the big picture as God sees it so that we can always do the right thing? But that’s just the point. The meaning of everything isn’t ours to know. God gives us what we need in order to follow him. If we would just open up our hearts and minds we could see what we need to see in order to be good disciples. But often we forget the grace we have been given and ignore what’s right in front of us in order to see what we want to see.

    For who has known the mind of the Lord
    or who has been his counselor?
    Or who has given him anything
    that he may be repaid?

    I often wonder if we really could see the whole big picture if we were more obedient to God’s will. Maybe it’s our disobedience, and not God, that keeps us from seeing everything as it truly is.

    When it comes down to it, though, God is God and we are not. That is what St. Paul has been trying to tell us these past couple of weeks as we’ve been reading from his letter to the Romans. We have been disobedient and cannot be obedient apart from God’s grace. Thanks be to God, he has poured out his grace and mercy upon us. We cannot see what God wants us to see apart from God’s grace. Thanks be to God, he gives us his vision when we ask for it and are disposed to receive it.

    We cannot give anything to God that he has not already given us. Our desire to thank him is itself a gift from God – it says that in today’s preface to the Eucharistic Prayer. God made us for relationship with him. We are called to be obedient to God’s grace and mercy that we might be able to see ourselves, others, and the whole world as it really is, and to know God’s plan for our lives. The Psalmist certainly received what he asked for today, and we can too: Lord, in your great love, answer me.

  • St. Martin de Porres

    St. Martin de Porres

    Today’s readings | Today’s saint

    Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,
    but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

    St-Martin-DePorresSo much of our progress in living the Christian life is hampered by our own ego, self-centeredness and pride. Many people think sexual sins are the worst sins there are. While they are certainly bad, when it comes to being able to get past them, they pale in comparison to pride. Pride is a stubborn sin that refuses to go away, and puts up huge barriers between us and the God who made us. Whenever I am finding it difficult to progress in my spiritual life, I find that I need to do a deep examination of conscience to root out whatever traces of pride may have been rearing their ugly heads. I need to take that lower place at the table, realizing that it’s not about me, it’s about Christ. It’s an examination of conscience we should all make regularly.

    And for our example, we can certainly look to today’s saint, St. Martin de Porres. He was the son of a Spanish nobleman of Peru, and a slave woman, probably black or perhaps Native American. His father refused to acknowledge him for eight years, and eventually gave up on the family after the birth of his sister. His mother apprenticed him to a local barber/surgeon when he was twelve. After a few years in this position, he applied to the Dominicans as a “lay helper” because he felt like he was not good enough to be a full brother. After some time with them, the community begged him to become a full brother and he did so, serving the poor and serving in the community’s priory and kitchen. But he never got past being “a poor slave,” even noting that the community should sell him when the priory was in debt.

    St. Paul tells us today that “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” No matter how often we try to turn away, or more poignantly today, no matter how often we try to forget that God is God and we are not, God never turns away from us, and continues to give us the gifts and call us to service. What we are is God’s gift to us and what we become is our gift back to God. Putting our gifts at his service, ever aware of the source of those gifts, we are called to grow in holiness. St. Martin was called “Martin of Charity” because of his loving service to all those in need, and because of his great humility. May we see in him our model, never exalting ourselves, but always humbling ourselves for the sake of Christ.