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  • The Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Every now and then it’s a good idea to reflect on virtues.  Virtues don’t get enough play in our society these days.  More often, we hear of taking care of ourselves, doing whatever makes us happy, that kind of thing. The virtues definitely counsel against that kind of self-absorption, but frankly, the virtues lead to greater happiness in the long run.

    You’ve heard of the deadly sins. They are those sins that can really get at us time and time again in our lives and turn us away from God. They are things like lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. But for each of those deadly sins, there is also a life-giving virtue. Today, our readings focus on humility, which is the life-giving virtue that is the antidote to pride. Of the seven deadly sins, pride is usually considered to be the original and the most serious of the sins. Pride was the sin that caused the angel Lucifer to fall from grace. Pride was the sin that caused our first parents to reach for the forbidden fruit that was beyond them, all in an attempt to know everything God does. A good examination of conscience would probably convince all of us that we indulge in pride from time to time, and sometimes even pervasively, in our own lives. It’s what causes us to compare ourselves to others, to try to solve all our problems in ways that don’t include God, to be angry when everything does not go the way we would have it. Pride is the deadly sin that often-times is the gateway to other sins like judging others, self-righteousness, and sarcasm. Pride, as the saying goes, and as Lucifer found out, doth indeed go before the fall, and when that happens in a person’s life, if it doesn’t break them in a way that convinces them of their need for God, will very often send them into a tailspin of despair. Pride is a particularly ugly thing.

    Humility, then, can be the answer to that particularly pernicious sin.  The wisdom writer Sirach, in our first reading, advises us to conduct our affairs with humility: “Humble yourself the more, the greater you are,  and you will find favor with God.”  But when we think about humility, maybe we associate that with a kind of “wimpiness.” When you think about humble people, perhaps you imagine breast-beating, pious souls who allow themselves to be the doormats for the more aggressive and ambitious.  Humble people, we tend to think, don’t buck the system, they just say their prayers, accept whatever life throws at them, and, when they are inflicted with pain and suffering, they just “offer it up.” (Not that offering up our sufferings is a bad thing, mind you.)

    But Jesus described himself as “humble of heart,” and I dare say we wouldn’t think of him as such a pushover.  He, of all people, took every occasion to buck the system and chastise the rich and powerful.  He never just let things go or avoided confrontation.  Confrontation was at the core of what he came to do.  But he was indeed humble, humbling himself to become human like the rest of us, when he could easily have clung to his glory as God.  He was strong enough to call us all, in the strongest of terms, to examine our lives and reform our attitudes, but humble enough to die for our sins.

    And so it is this humble Jesus who speaks up and challenges his hearers to adopt lives of humility in today’s gospel reading.  One wonders why the “leading Pharisee” even invited Jesus to the banquet.  If we’ve been paying attention to the story so far, we know that the Pharisee had ulterior motives; he was certainly looking to catch Jesus in an embarrassing situation.  But Jesus isn’t playing along with all that.  In fact, one can certainly taste the disgust he has for what he sees going on at the banquet.

    In our day, banquets are usually put together with thoughtfulness and with a mind toward making one’s guests feel comfortable.  If you’ve been involved in a wedding, you know that the hosts try to seat people with those of like mind, with people who might have common experiences.  It’s enough to drive a host to distraction, sometimes, because it is such hard work. But in Jesus’ day, the customs were even more rigid.  People were seated in terms of their importance, and at this banquet, Jesus watched people try to assert how important they were by the places they took at table.  This was all an exercise in pride, and it seems that Jesus was repulsed by it.  So he tells them the parable that exhorts them to humble themselves and take the lowest place instead: far better to be asked to come to a more important place than to be sent down to a lower place and face embarrassment.

    But there was another aspect of pride taking place here as well.  The “leading Pharisee” had obviously invited people who were important enough to repay the favor some day – with one obvious exception – Jesus was decidedly not in a position to do so, at least not in this life.  So he tells his host a parable also, exhorting him to humble himself and invite not those who are in a position to repay his generosity, but instead he should invite “he poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” – and know that because they cannot repay him, he would be repaid at the banquet of the righteous in heaven.

    We don’t know how the guests or the host responded to Jesus’ exhortation to practice humility.  We do, however, know that Jesus modeled it in his own life.  Indeed, he was not asking them to do something he was unwilling to do himself.  When he said, “For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” he was in a way foreshadowing what would happen to him.  Humbling himself to take up our cross – our cross – he would be exalted in the glory of the resurrection.

    The good news is that glory can be ours too, if we would humble ourselves and lay down our lives for others.  If we stop treating the people in our lives as stepping-stones to something better, we might reach something better than we can find on our own.  If we humble ourselves to feed the poor and needy, to reach out to the marginalized and forgotten, we might be more open to the grace our Lord has in store for us in the kingdom of heaven.

    Life has a way of teaching us humility, which is sometimes hard, but it’s good if we accept it.  As you might know, my mother has been ill with various things over the last couple of years.  Lately, she has needed more help at home, and my sisters and I have been taking turns to be there for her and with her so that she is safe and comfortable at home.  As you can imagine, Mom, who has always been the one who helped us figure everything out in our lives, had to embrace the humility of letting her children care for her.  She is totally in her right frame of mind, it’s just that her body is betraying her, and that’s hard for a person who has always been strong.  But I have seen her accept the help we have offered in love, and it’s had an impact on me, I who also have a tendency to want to take care of everything myself.  Just ask my staff!  This humility that we have been learning through all of this has helped me to love my mother, my sisters, myself, and God so much more.  There is grace in embracing humility, and Jesus promises us that today.

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

  • The Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think it’s easy to be dismayed at where the world is these days.  Political candidates and politicians on both sides of the aisle are disappointing at best.  The pro-abortion vitriol is vicious and hateful.  Violence in our cities, schools, and public spaces is constant.  Public sin and our own private sin beat us down all the time.  This is most definitely a time of persecution. So it could well be that we are tempted to despair, to shake our heads and try to avoid hearing about it all.

    But we are called to live differently as Christian disciples.  Despair is not an option for us; we have the hope of the Gospel, the presence of the Holy Spirit, the promise of eternity.  So the question that we have is, how do we live through all the sadness of the world around us, not to mention the sadness in our own lives, while we wait for all those promises to be fulfilled?  The virtue that gets us through that is called fortitude, something we don’t talk about often enough, but something that has real value for our spiritual lives.

    The Church’s Catechism tells us that “Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life. The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause.” (CCC, 1808) Jesus puts it even more succinctly in today’s Gospel: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” He wants us to be a people on fire, a people who will not waver in our pursuit of living the Gospel, a people who will not back down in the face of obstacles or even oppression, a people who live their faith joyfully and with firm conviction that our God is trustworthy and faithful. The Christian believer is called to exercise the virtue of fortitude because nothing else is worthy of our God.

    The author of the letter to the Hebrews speaks of fortitude today.  Speaking of Jesus, “the leader and perfecter of our faith,” he says:

    For the sake of the joy that lay before him
    he endured the cross, despising its shame,

    and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God.
    Consider how he endured such opposition from sinners,
    in order that you may not grow weary and lose heart.
    In your struggle against sin
    you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.

    Resisting the opposition in our society and in our lives to the point of shedding blood is the kind of fortitude that we as disciples need to live in our lives.  It’s a tall order!

    Nobody says fortitude is easy. Jesus himself was very realistic about this, and warns us today that fortitude in living the Christian life can be a very divisive way of life. The disciple can and will run into all sorts of oppression, and can even lead to broken relationships with those who are close to us. If that Gospel calls upon us to take an unpopular position, and speak up on behalf of the poor, the alien, the prisoner, or a pro-life issue, we may find that even some of our friends or family cannot go there with us. Being a Christian can make us feel like foreigners in our own land. And we are foreigners, because for those of us who are first of all citizens of God’s kingdom, Jesus’ vision and values come first. All because Jesus has come to set a blazing fire on the earth and that fire, to some extent, already burns in us.

    Today’s reading from the letter to the Hebrews makes it clear that we aren’t running the race alone. We have at our disposal the support and encouragement of a “great cloud of witnesses” which the Church calls the Communion of Saints. They may be the official saints of the Church, or other saintly people we have known or do know who intercede for us in our struggle of faith.  These are men and women who have suffered much and overcome much in pursuit of the kingdom of God. This great cloud of witnesses cheers us on, is an example for us, and is part of God’s way of helping us to live lives marked by fortitude.  If we didn’t have the example of that great cloud of witnesses, the call to fortitude would surely be insurmountable.

    Very often on the journey of discipleship, we may find that the oppression and division that the Gospel causes casts us down.  Think about the loved ones you have called to live the faith, come to Mass, make good decisions, and have rejected that call.  Like poor Jeremiah in today’s first reading, maybe we find that we have been thrown into a cistern of despair or hopelessness. All that sadness I mentioned in the beginning of my homily can be like that. Fortitude is the virtue that helps us in the midst of all that, to wait with faithfulness on someone like Ebed-melech the Cushite to come to our rescue and draw us up out of the pit.

    The truth is, today’s Liturgy of the Word can come across as very negative. Who wants to hear about being cast into a cistern? Are we eager to find that we are going to be in angry division with people close to us? The temptation to let all of this go in one ear and out the other, remaining instead in the comfort of our luke-warmness is almost overwhelming. But that’s just not good enough. We can’t live that way and still call ourselves disciples. It is not enough to love God in our heads. We need to be on fire, actively living the graces of baptism that we have received – to live with fortitude, integrity, conviction, fervor, and burning zeal. We have to be willing to live in the shadow of the cross, where we resolve all our divisions and live the baptism that promotes Gospel peace.

  • Saint Jane Frances de Chantal

    Saint Jane Frances de Chantal

    Today we have the optional memorial of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, a wife, mother, nun and founder of a religious community.  I decided to celebrate this memorial because I think her story is one that is deeply encouraging. 

    Jane’s mother died when she was 18 years old, and her father became the influence on her life and education.  At 21, she married Christophe, the Baron of Chantal, by whom she had six children, three of whom died in infancy. At her castle, she restored the custom of daily Mass, and was seriously engaged in various charitable works.  She would offer a meal to the needy at her door.  Often people who had just received food from her would pretend to leave, go around the house and get back in line for more. When asked why she let these people get away with this, Jane said, “What if God turned me away when I came back to him again and again with the same request?”

    Jane’s husband was killed in a hunting accident after seven years of marriage, and she sank into a deep depression that lasted for four. She continued to struggle with depression for the rest of her life.  She had been recovering at her family home, but eventually her father-in-law threatened to disinherit her children if she did not return to his home.  Jane Frances managed to remain cheerful in spite of him and his insolent housekeeper.

    When she was 32, Jane met Saint Francis de Sales who became her spiritual director, softening some of the severities imposed by her former director. She wanted to become a nun but he persuaded her to defer this decision. She took a vow to remain unmarried and to obey her director.

    After three years, Francis told Jane of his plan to found an institute of women that would be a haven for those whose health, age, or other considerations barred them from entering the already established communities. There would be no cloister, and they would be free to undertake spiritual and corporal works of mercy.  They were primarily intended to exemplify the virtues of Mary at the Visitation: humility and meekness, and became known as the Daughters of the Visitation, or Visitation nuns.

    Many sought Jane Frances out for spiritual direction, and she would always counsel them, “Should you fall even fifty times a day, never on any account should that surprise or worry you. Instead, ever so gently set your heart back in the right direction and practice the opposite virtue, all the time speaking words of love and trust to our Lord after you have committed a thousand faults, as much as if you had committed only one. Once we have humbled ourselves for the faults God allows us to become aware of in ourselves, we must forget them and go forward.”

    She died in 1641, at sixty-nine years of age.

    Saint Jane Frances suffered from depression for most of her life.  In writing about this experience, she mentioned a variety of distressing temptations and that she was no longer like herself.  Her spirituality, along with the direction of Saint Francis de Sales, provided a way of holiness that meant confronting her depression with virtue.  While this path never completely cured her depression, it did at times alleviate symptoms.  Her struggles enabled her to extend empathy and gentleness to those around her.  Saint Jane Frances is the patron saint of those with depression, mothers, widows, and wives.

    Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, pray for us. 

  • Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

    Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

    Today’s readings

    Today Jesus extols the virtues of child-like faith. Such a faith is dependent on our God who seeks us out like a shepherd in search of a lost sheep. This is a faith that realizes that God is in charge, and that we are happiest when we let God do what he wants to do in us, rather than fighting his inspiration. This was the kind of faith that Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross had.

    Born into a prominent Jewish family in Breslau, Germany as Edith Stein, she abandoned Judaism in her teens. She studied philosophy under Edmund Husserl, a leading proponent of the philosophy of phenomenology. Edith earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1916. Later, she was influenced by the writings of Saint Teresa of Avila, and she became a Catholic on January 1, 1922. She taught in various schools until 1933, when anti-semitic legislation went into effect, and at that time entered the Carmelite convent at Cologne, where she took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

    At the end of 1939, she moved to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands. The Nazis occupied that country in 1940. In retaliation for being denounced by the Dutch bishops, the Nazis arrested all Dutch Jews who had become Christians. Teresa Benedicta and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942.

    Faithfulness is easy when there aren’t any obstacles on our path to God. What we need to remember is that when obstacles appear, it doesn’t mean we are cut off from our God. That can never happen. When obstacles appear, when our faith is tested, we need to listen for God’s voice and follow the way he marks out for us. The Psalmist today has all the advice we need to hear: “How sweet to my palate are your promises, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”

  • Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings speak to us about remaining in relationship with God.  In the first reading, Nahum prophesies that Israel’s subjection to Nineveh will not stand.  God will deliver them and watch over them, but notice the command he gives them to fulfill:

    Celebrate your feasts, O Judah,
    fulfill your vows!
    For nevermore shall you be invaded
    by the scoundrel; he is completely destroyed.

    So the freedom they receive is a freedom to worship and serve God, fulfilling their vows.

    Jesus, of course, takes it several steps further.  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  Following the law was the first step, but it was pretty basic.  Even if the people obeyed it – which they often did not – it was still a matter of will mostly, and not heart.  Jesus calls us to make the same sacrifice he did: lay down our lives for one another out of love.

    “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  And isn’t that the truth, really?  When we get so caught up in ourselves and our own pettiness, how quickly life slips away and we wonder what it all meant.  But when we lose our lives following Christ and loving God and neighbor with reckless abandon, well, then we have really found something.

    God loved us first and best, and always seeks covenant with us.  He gives us freedom to choose relationship with him.  How willing are we this day to lose our lives relentlessly spending the love we have received from our God with others?

  • Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel reading is one of my favorites.  Truthfully, though, it always makes me a little uncomfortable.  Which is what it’s supposed to do.  This Gospel wants us to get out of the boat, too.

    We can tend to give Saint Peter a lot of grief over this incident.  If he was able to walk on the water for a few steps, why couldn’t he finish the journey?  What we see happen here is that while he has his eyes on Jesus, he can accomplish what seems impossible: he walks on water.  But when he gets distracted by the storm and the wind and the waves, he begins to sink into the water.

    Our spiritual journeys are a lot like that, I think.  It takes courage to get out of the boat, but the boat is not where Jesus is.  We won’t get to him unless we make that leap of faith and step out of the comfort of our boats – whatever those boats may be.  And we do fine while we have our eyes on Jesus, but the minute we get distracted by the storms raging all around us, we begin to sink into the ocean of despair that surrounds us.

    When that happens, we can be depressed about our progress.  We can be very hard on ourselves for falling yet again.  But we have to understand that Peter, and we, are not the biggest losers in this whole incident.  There were eleven guys who never had the courage or the faith to get out of the boat in the first place.  And so, like Peter, we can reach up to our Lord and let him pull us out of the swirling waters once again.

    For those of us who take the leap of faith with Peter today, we may be of “little faith,” we may even doubt sometimes, but even our “little faith” is something, and Jesus can do a whole lot with that.

  • The Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    At first glance, it all seems so simple, doesn’t it? “Go and do likewise.” Easy enough. But when a command like “go and do likewise” comes at the end of one of Jesus’ parables, we really ought to suspect it’s going to stretch us a little bit, and today is no exception.

    So let’s take a step back and look at today’s first reading to get some background for what’s happening in today’s Gospel. Moses is exhorting the people to keep the commandments of God. But which ones? The Ten Commandments? Perhaps. But the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus give the fullness of the Jewish law. There you can read over six hundred laws pertaining to everything from hospitality to the treatment of slaves, and then some. I often think the people had to be overwhelmed when they thought about that many laws. They may even have been fearful that they would have accidentally broken one of those laws in the course of daily life. But Moses is telling them that they don’t have to be reaching to find the laws they need to follow. Those laws aren’t remote or mysterious. They don’t have to cross the sea or search the sky. Because the law they need to follow is very near to them: on their lips and in their heart. They have only to carry it out.

    This is almost exactly the same thing Jesus is saying in the Gospel today. The scholar of the law who approaches Jesus today isn’t really seeking further knowledge. Rather, he is showing off and testing Jesus to see what he would say. He wants to know what it takes to inherit eternal life. Which is the right question, but for the wrong reason. In other words, he really isn’t concerned about his salvation – he probably thinks that a scholar of the law like him has that all wrapped up anyway – instead he is trying to trap Jesus and make him look foolish. 

    As Jesus often does, he answers the question with a question: “What is written in the law?” The scholar feels on good, solid, comfortable ground with that question, and responds correctly for a good Jew in that time and place: Love God with everything that you are, and love your neighbor. Loving God and neighbor, as Jesus tells us elsewhere, is the Law and the Prophets all wrapped up in a quick little elevator speech. So Jesus commends him, and says that if he does this he will live. But the man wants to justify himself a little more, and so he asks, “Who is my neighbor?” And this is the ten-thousand-dollar question of the day.

    There are a few Greek words that translate to “neighbor” for us.  The Greek word for “neighbor” in this particular parable means something a little more than a person living near you.  The word for  “neighbor” here is something a little higher. This word is almost a verb. It’s not just someone nearby, but instead the dynamic of coming near to another, of approaching and drawing close.

    I think we all have an idea in mind when we hear the word “neighbor.” I remember the neighborhood where I grew up, the neighborhood in which my mother continues to live. I had friends who went to school with me, and even to our Church. When we were growing up, we would spend hot summer nights together outside, playing “kick the can” and other kids’ games. Later, we attended our youth group together. Our parents kept an eye not just on their own kids, but on all the kids in the neighborhood. When my sister was little, she used to like to climb trees, and as soon as she did, the neighbor would call to let my mother know so she wouldn’t fall out of the tree and break her neck, which thankfully never happened. When someone had an illness or death in the family, there would be food brought to the house. If there was work to be done, someone would always lend a hand. We were neighbors to each other.

    But again, as nice as this picture of “neighbor” is, Jesus is calling us to go deeper. He is asking us to step outside ourselves, and to see a person in need and respond, no matter where that person is, no matter his or her race, color or creed. This is a real challenge in every time and place.  The person in need is always our neighbor. Listen to that statement again, because it’s crucial to what we’re hearing today and I don’t want you to leave this holy place without coming to understand it: the person in need is always, always, always our neighbor.

    Before we come down too hard on the priest and the Levite in the story, let’s give them a bit of a break. In telling the story, Jesus doesn’t condemn the priest and the Levite.  They were doing what people in their position would probably do, because they had to be concerned about remaining ritually pure so that they could lead worship. But Jesus says to them that they cannot be so concerned about the finer points of the law that they miss responding to the needs of a neighbor among them.

    And we have to hear that too. Because we too can get so caught up in our own laws that we end up as self-righteous as that scholar of the law. We may claim to respect life if we have never been involved in an abortion. And that’s a great start, but respecting life also demands that we care for the poor and needy, that we care for the health of every person, that we honor our elderly brothers and sisters, and that we repent of our racism and refuse to honor stereotypes that are an affront to human dignity. We may claim to honor the sixth commandment if we have never committed adultery. But honoring that commandment also means that we live pure lives and strive always to purify our hearts. It means we don’t take part in off-color jokes and that we refrain from watching television or movies, or visiting internet sites that lead us down the wrong path. We may claim to be thankful for our daily bread when we say grace before meals. But being thankful for our blessings means also that we share them with those who are hungry. Because Jesus is leading us to a deeper reality today, we can no longer get caught up in the self-righteousness that the scholar of the law brings to his encounter with Jesus.

    The person in need is always our neighbor. We don’t need to search far and wide to figure out what to do for that person. We have only to see the generous and self-giving response of the Samaritan in today’s Gospel and, as Jesus commands us, to “go and do likewise.” The Law and the Prophets are as near to us as that.

  • Saturday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think it’s amazing to let your imagination wander to this vision that the prophet Isaiah had in today’s first reading.  Looking upon God in all God’s glory would be awe-inspiring, perhaps even terrifying.  Seeing that, Isaiah is inspired to do a kind of examination of conscience, where he sees how sinful and unclean he is, living among people who are sinful and unclean, and realizing that having seen God’s greatness, he is doomed.

    It’s a useful reflection for us disciples, I think.  Because sometimes I think we are overly familiar with God, and don’t remember his greatness and power and glory.  God is our intimate friend and loving redeemer, but he is also the creator of all the universe who holds all of us and everything in being by his own power.

    So I get why Isaiah felt like he was doomed.  But God will not have that; he has chosen Isaiah for the task of prophecy to the nations.  So he purifies Isaiah’s lips and asks who he should send.  And purified of his wickedness, Isaiah is able to say, “Here I am, send me!”

    We too have been purified by Holy Baptism, and in that ritual the minister touches the lips and ears of the infant, opening them to the praise and glory of God.  Not by a burning ember from the altar, but by the sacrifice of Our Lord, we have been purged of sin and called to holiness and ministry.  Today and every day, we are asked by our awesome God, “Whom shall I send?  Who will go for us?”

  • Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel underlines the failure of the Jewish leaders of the time.  Jesus was casting out demons from many people, which was what they were supposed to do but could not.  They were too busy attending to the the Law instead of seeing to the salvation of souls, which is what the Law was intended to accomplish. So instead of fixing what was lacking in their faith, they accuse Jesus of being in league with the devil. Kind of a “best defense is a good offense” sort of thing.  But Jesus sees the vast number of people who long for spiritual care but are not getting it, and laments the lack of laborers for the harvest.

    The issue is just as pressing now as it was then.  Too many times, we are distracted by whatever issue and miss tending to the people around us who need God’s presence.  The needs aren’t different: people need to know God loves them and is present to them; they need to see and experience God’s infinite mercy; they need healing; they need to be accompanied in their pain; they need to see the value of living for God.  It’s up to all of us disciples to make that life real and attractive, so that everyone can come to know the Lord.  You might be the Jesus that someone needs to see today.  You might be the laborer God is sending into some situation today.  Don’t be afraid to follow the Master of the harvest!

  • The Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Blessed be the Name of Jesus

    The Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Blessed be the Name of Jesus

    Today’s readings

    “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.”

    I don’t think we really understand and respect the power of the name of Jesus in our day to day lives.  Very often people take the name of the Lord in vain, violating the second commandment of the Decalogue, and even if we bristle about it a bit, how often do we challenge it?  How often do we ourselves take the Holy Name in vain?

    Here is some context.  In Judaism, the second commandment was taken so very literally that the name of God (the one is abbreviated YHWH) was never pronounced.  That very abbreviation was made without vowels, so that when it came up in a text, the reader would not pronounce it.  They would substitute with the word “Adonai,” which we translate as “Lord.”  Interestingly, for some time in the Church, it was commonplace to hear that Y-word in Catholic Liturgy, for which we should be ashamed.  There were even hymns (which have since been revised) that used the word.  The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued a directive in 2008 that this practice was forbidden.  So we can see here that names used to refer to the Divine Persons are sacred and not to be thrown around lightly.  Not even in the Sacred Liturgy. 

    We echo this slightly in Catholic worship.  You will often see the Presider of Liturgy bow his head when the names of Jesus, Mary, or the saint of the day, are mentioned.  This is a practice that is given in number 275 of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.  It says, “A bow of the head is made when the three Divine Persons are named together and at the names of Jesus, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Saint in whose honor Mass is being celebrated.”  The instruction doesn’t say who does that, but clearly the Presider at least should, but even the faithful can do that as well.  In fact, in older times in very Catholic areas, whenever someone heard or used the name of Jesus in conversation, believers would bow their heads.  I once heard a homily in my young days from a priest who recommended that we should consider bowing our heads whenever we heard someone take the name of the Lord in vain, and it’s not a bad idea.

    And for good reason.  “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.”  Did you catch that?  The name of Our Lord terrifies demons!  So just as Jews don’t pronounce the name of the Lord, we should be very careful how we use it.  When we use the name of the Lord, it has to be with utmost respect and reverence.  Because His Name has power.

    Taking a cue from this very Gospel reading, there is a tradition of deliverance for those who are dealing with some kind of oppression.  It’s just short of an actual exorcism.  In that process, the oppressed persons are encouraged to name the things they are struggling with and to renounce them in the name of Jesus, and, in the name of Jesus, to claim blessing and victory over sin.  And believers are absolutely entitled to do that, yet we hardly ever think to do so.  Jesus sent the seventy-two out to claim victory over sin and illness and everything that oppressed people in his Holy Name.  They were to take nothing “extra” with them, because they could depend on the power of his Name to provide for them.

    We can do that too, but perhaps we need to be reconciled with his Holy Name.  We need to repent of using his name in vain, and repent of not knowing the power that His Name holds.  Even the demons know better.  We can claim victory over everything that oppresses us, whenever we do it in the name of Jesus.

    Say these with me if you know the prayer.  If you don’t know it, google “Divine Praises” and memorize the prayer.  It’s wonderful to have it in your prayer toolbox.

    Blessed be God.
    Blessed be his holy Name.
    Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
    Blessed be the name of Jesus.
    Blessed be his most Sacred Heart.
    Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
    Blessed be Jesus in the most holy Sacrament of the altar.
    Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
    Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
    Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
    Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
    Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
    Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
    Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.