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  • Saturday of the Thirty-First Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Thirty-First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “The love of money is the root of all evil.” “Money can’t buy happiness.” We have all sorts of proverbs that aim to keep us at right relationship not just with our financial resources, but really with all the many gifts that we have. Today’s Liturgy of the Word gives us some humble pointers too on this important issue.

    St. Paul is telling the Romans in our first reading today about all the many people that have been part of his life and thanking them and greeting them for what they have done for him and his ministry.  In this case, his abundance comes from generous and gifted people, and not from financial resources per se.

    Jesus today speaks to the Pharisees, who, as the Gospel today tells us, “loved money.” He tells them that their love of money was not going to lead them to God. Instead, it leads them to dishonest transactions with dishonest people. Just as a servant cannot serve two masters, so they could not expect to serve both God and mammon, the so-called god of material wealth and greed.

    We live in times where the love of money has led us to considerable evil. Greed and the desire for instant gratification has led people to be overspent and overextended. Major corporations, greedy for more wealth, playing off the misguided desires of so many people, have defaulted, and others have grown rich at the expense of the poor. Major breaches in retail security have cost millions of dollars due to hacking of financial information. In these days, it may be well for us to hear that we cannot serve both God and mammon. It may be well for us to come to the conclusion that abundance doesn’t always mean an excess of finances. And it’s never a bad time to hear that we need to make God our only God, yet again.

  • The Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When I was in seminary, I had a Scripture professor who, when someone would make an insightful comment or answer a question correctly, would exclaim, quoting Jesus in today’s Gospel reading, “You are not far from the kingdom of God!”  That comment, made to the scribe at the end of the reading, is an amazing thing to hear Jesus say, because he was always berating the scribes and Pharisees for not getting it, for being so concerned about dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” of the law, that they totally missed the spirit of the law.  Jesus always maintained that they were going to completely miss out on the kingdom of God because of this blindness.  So here is a scribe who actually gets it, who knows what the first of all of the commandments is.  But somehow, in the tone of his congratulatory statement, I think Jesus is throwing in a bit of a challenge to the scribe: now that you know it, it’s time to live it.

    The way it plays out, of course, is typical of the way we see the religious establishment interacting with Jesus in the Gospel narratives.  One of them approaches Jesus, most likely not out of an interest in actual dialogue or even to learn something, and asks a question to which they already know the right answer.  The question “Which is the first of all the commandments?” is one that scholars had long debated, because there were so many commandments.  Not, of course, just the ten that we are familiar with, but, throughout all of the Hebrew Scriptures, more than six hundred!  But the answer that Jesus gives is one that is well-accepted.  In fact, it is a part of scripture that Jews memorized and taught their children to memorize.  One that boiled it down to what worshipping One God meant:

    Hear, O Israel!
    The Lord our God is Lord alone!
    You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
    with all your soul,
    with all your mind,
    and with all your strength.

    But here’s the point where it really gets interesting: Jesus goes him one better, saying:

    The second is this:
    You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
    There is no other commandment greater than these.

    The scribe hadn’t asked for two greatest commandments, but if he had, he probably would have picked that second one too.  These two commandments boiled down all of the teaching of the law and the prophets into a neat, concise package: love God and love neighbor.  This was foundational to the Jewish way of life, and having been quoted so quickly, without thinking, by Jesus, no one was brave enough to ask him any more questions.  The scribe goes away close to the kingdom of God, if he will stop asking questions and actually living the law and the prophets.

    That challenge is there for us, too, of course.  Love of God and love of neighbor, loving the way God has loved us, this is the heart not just of the Old Testament law and the prophets, but also of the Gospel itself.  God, who loved us enough to send his only Son, so that we might believe in him and have eternal life, also sent that Son to show us the way.  So this Gospel interaction is foundational to our call as disciples.  In order to be on course for the kingdom of God, a place we all want to be, we have to love God and love our neighbor.  The kingdom of God is not a far-off distant thing or place to be achieved in the afterlife, but is in fact here among us, as Jesus proclaimed all through his life on earth.  One gets to it by love of God and love of neighbor, by living the love that God has so freely given us.  That is why living these commandments from our hearts is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.  So love of God and love of neighbor, the heart of the Judeo-Christian life, needs to be the center of everything we think or say or do.  Love of God and love of neighbor needs to be the lens through which we see everything.

    So, friends, that means that we have to bring that lens with us to see the way through every interaction of our lives.  Not just the ones that are easy and joyful, but also the interactions that are frustrating and painful.  We have to love God and neighbor when the guy cuts us off on the highway; when the customer service agent puts us on hold for the fourth or fifth time; when we or a loved one get a frightening diagnosis and we have to navigate the healthcare system; when our coworkers drop the ball and make us look bad; when our children make poor decisions; when we disagree with a spouse or loved one; when a government official makes a terrible decision; and all the rest.  Then it’s time, not just to say “okay, whatever, that’s fine” but instead to make decisions and corrections and advocate for the truth and do what is right, but do it all with love and grace, and with trust in God’s love and mercy.

    The Liturgy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe, which we will celebrate in a few weeks, calls on us to work with God to put forward, here on earth, a kingdom of love and peace, a kingdom of justice and truth.  You’ll hear that quote in the preface to the Eucharistic Prayer that day.  That’s what our life on earth is all about.  We truly are not far from the kingdom of God.  All we have to do is to love God, love neighbor, and enter in.

  • Friday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It could have been jealousy.  Or maybe they just felt threatened.  Either way, the Pharisees had lost sight of the mission.

    You could see how they would have been jealous: here they are working long and hard to take care of the many prescripts of their religion, attending with exacting detail to the commandments of God and the laws that governed their way of life.  But it is Jesus, this upstart, and not them, who is really moving the people and getting things done.  People were being healed – inside and out – and others were being moved to follow him on his way.  That had to make them green with envy.

    And, yes, they probably felt threatened.  The way that he was preaching, the religion he was talking about – well, it was all new and seemed to fly in the face of what they had long believed and what they had worked so hard to preserve.

    But how had they gotten here, how did they lose the way?  Because what Jesus advocated was really not a different message: it was all about how God loves his people and that we should love God and others with that same kind of love.  That message was there: buried deep in the laws and rules that they were so familiar with, but somehow, the laws and rules became more important than the love.

    The Pharisees wanted to preserve their religion and the way of life they had lived for so long.  Jesus wanted to make manifest God’s love, forgiveness of sins, and true healing.  It’s not that the rules of religion are not important, but the underlying message and the greatness of God cannot be overshadowed by legalism.  That is the argument in today’s Gospel; that is the argument that ultimately brought Jesus to the cross.  He would rather die than live without us; he paid the price that we might be truly healed and might truly live.  As the Psalmist reminds us today: Praise the Lord!

  • Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles

    Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles

    Today’s readings

    There’s a great scene in one of my favorite movies, “The Princess Bride,” when Vizzini and Inigo Montoya are sword fighting, and Vizzini keeps using the word “inconceivable.”  After a while, Inigo says, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”  Well, today we celebrate the feast of two apostles whose names do not mean who we think they mean!

    Jude is called Judas in Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles, but he’s not that Judas.  Matthew and Mark call him Thaddeus.  We have in the New Testament the letter of Jude, but scholars say it is not written by the man whose feast we celebrate today.  Saint Jude is perhaps best known as the patron saint of the seemingly-impossible, reminding us that in God, all things are possible.

    Simon – and this is not the Simon who Jesus later named Peter –  was a Zealot, a member of a radical party that disavowed all ties with the government, holding that Israel should be re-elevated to political greatness under the leadership of God alone.  They also held that any payment of taxes to the Romans was a blasphemy against God.

    Neither of these men held any claim to greatness here on earth; they found their glory in following Christ.  Their joy was, as St. Paul instructs us in his letter to the Ephesians, in that their citizenship was in heaven, as it is for all of us.  We are merely passing through this place, and our task while we are here, as was the task for Simon and Jude and all the apostles, is to live for Christ and to live the Gospel.  The reward for them, then, as is for all of us, is in heaven, their and our true home.

    Their message, as the Psalmist says, goes out to all the earth.  Blessed are all of us when we catch that message and live that message, following the way to Christ Jesus.

  • Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Fall is a season where we really see a lot of change, especially in our region.  Leaves are changing, the air is getting cooler, the hours of sunlight are rapidly diminishing.  It makes us grateful for the bits of life that we still see, because we know that the winter is coming and we will be groaning in eager anticipation of spring.

    So maybe we can resonate with what Saint Paul is saying in today’s first reading.  His basic message is that nothing is perfect yet; we are not where we should be – perfection is still in the future for all of us.  We see that our own lack of perfection has repercussions that touch all of creation.  There will come a time when God fully reveals everything and we will see ourselves and the entire world through God’s eyes.  That is the reward of the Kingdom that we all eagerly hope for. But we are not there yet.  We, along with all of creation, groan in anticipation of what will be revealed in those days.

    In Masses for the dead, the Third Eucharistic Prayer says, “There we hope to enjoy for ever the fullness of your glory, when you will wipe away every tear from our eyes.  For seeing you, our God, as you are, we shall be like you for all the ages and praise you without end, through Christ our Lord, through whom you bestow on the world all that is good.”  That’s the promise.  It will be like the mustard seed, come to full growth, that becomes a large enough bush to provide shelter for the birds of the sky.  It will be like yeast mixed through three measures of flour until it leavens the whole batch of dough.  Then, as the preface for the feast of Christ the King says, Jesus will present to the Father “an eternal and universal kingdom: a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.”

    Put very simply, the best is yet to come for all of us, and for all of creation. In these waning days of the Church year, we continue to long – no, groan – for the day when everything will come to fruition and the Kingdom of God will be revealed in all its resplendent glory.  We have this as our hope – we don’t see it yet – but as Saint Paul says, who hopes for what one sees?  We have hope that one day we will enter into the glory of the Kingdom because we will have become holy by being caught up in the One who is holiness itself.

  • The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    At the heart of today’s Gospel reading is the question of whether we as disciples of Jesus are willing to go where he’s leading us.  Much could be said about the posturing of James and John to get the good seats in the kingdom.  But as Jesus tells them, they didn’t even know what they were asking. They had no idea what the kingdom would look like. They even missed the fact that it was in some ways already there.  But their ambition is not the point here.

    The point, as Jesus illustrates, is that his kingdom is not one of honor and glory, at least not in the way that James and John were thinking.  His kingdom is about suffering and redemption, and then honor and glory.  To get to the good stuff, you have to go through the cross.  And the most honored one is the one who serves everyone else. 

    The problem is that service always sounds great to us, until we actually have to do it.  Then there are plenty of other opportunities to do something or nothing that stand in our way.  We may have the best intentions, but never get around to making them happen.  And we all live busy lives, so it’s so easy for us to put those plans to be of service on the back burner.  

    Or maybe when a service opportunity comes around, we might think, “well, that’s not the way I want to serve.”  The project might seem too hard, or too messy, or take too much time.  Service always requires something of us.  Real service might even require much of us.  But if it doesn’t, is it really service at all?

    Here’s the thing: As the disciples found out, living in the kingdom was an all or nothing proposition.  Places at the right and left of Jesus aren’t just awarded on the basis of one’s good looks or engaging personality.  Those disciples, all but one of them, would give their lives for the kingdom and for Christ.  That has to be the lens through which we view our own lives of service and discipleship.  That has the be the direction that we take our lives.

    I got to thinking about people I know who got this.  One of the ones I always think about is our family friend Mike.  Mike owned the service station that our family used ever since we moved into the suburbs from the city.  Mike was the kind of service station owner that, if you came in for a tune up, he’d call and tell you that you didn’t need one and he’d just charge you for two new spark plugs and an oil change to save you some money.  He would also often do service on cars for people in need at little or no cost when the parish called him to do it.  When he died, there were seven priests at his funeral, and the funeral home and the church were packed.  Mike always did what he could to be of service.

    I had a funeral on Friday of a man who wasn’t a regular church-goer.  But having gone through our parish school, he must have learned enough of what Jesus is calling us to do today, that he was a Navy veteran, a member of the Patriot Guard, a volunteer firefighter, spent weeks cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina, and drove a truckload of water to Saint Louis when the Mississippi River flooded.  He did what he could to help people in need.

    Jesus in our Gospel reading today is calling us all to come to the table, to put on our aprons, and help serve everyone else. That flies in the face of our entitlement, it tears down the notion of looking out for number one, it means that inconvenience for the sake of others has to become a real option in our daily lives.  Honestly, not all of us, probably none of us, will have to give our actual lives for the kingdom.  Even if we would have to, I’m not sure we are ready to get up there on the cross and die for the sake of the ungodly.  Instead, we have to find little ways of love that build up others and take them on despite the millions of other things clamoring for our attention.

    Yesterday was our “Make a Difference Day.”  It was an amazing day where over five hundred of our parishioners came together to do projects in and around the parish.  On a beautiful fall Saturday morning, there was some sacrifice involved in giving up that time to make rosaries, rake leaves, give blood, collect donations, help on the mobile food pantry, make mats for the homeless out of old plastic shopping bags, make comfort blankets for Linden Oaks, install memorial bricks on the Stations of the Cross pathway, clean the pews here in church, pray in Adoration or for the unborn at the memorial crosses, and so much more.  I’m so grateful to everyone who participated in one way or another!  Yesterday was a good start, but there are always opportunities to be of service in big and small ways in our parish and in our community.  

    Jesus told us that whoever wishes to be great among us must be the servant of all. He himself did not think he was above washing the feet of his disciples on his last night on this earth. We are called to follow his ways if we want to follow him to the kingdom. “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  If that’s true of our Lord, then it has to be true of us who would be his followers.

  • Saint Teresa of Avila (Teresa of Jesus), Virgin, Mystic, and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Teresa of Avila (Teresa of Jesus), Virgin, Mystic, and Doctor of the Church

    Mass for the school children.

    Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Teresa of Avila, also known as Saint Teresa of Jesus.  Saint Teresa was a mystic, one who had deep experiences of prayer that enabled her to have visions.  She was known to have a very deep relationship with Jesus.  She once wrote, “We need no wings to go in search of Him, but have only to look upon Him present within us.”

    Teresa was born in Avila, Spain, and was the third of nine children.  When she was just thirteen years old, her mother died.  So her father sent her to an Augustinian convent to be educated by the nuns there.  After about two years, she became very ill, and had to return home to her family.  During that time, she began to think about what she wanted to do with her life, and decided to become a nun.  She wanted to join a Carmelite convent, but her father would not give her permission to go.  So she snuck out one night to join the convent, and her father gave his permission.

    The convent was huge.  It had 140 nuns, each of whom had a large space to live including a bedroom, kitchen, and a guest room.  Some of the nuns even had maids!  Eventually during this time, she found the busy convent a hard place to have a life of prayer.  One day, she was praying before a statue of the wounded Christ and was meditating on his sufferings, and had a deep experience of Jesus’ love.  That was when she decided the convent was keeping her from the real work of prayer that she was called to, and began to dream of a small convent where the nuns lived simple lives.

    Along with Saint John of the Cross, and some others, she set out to reform the Carmelite order, founding the order known as the Discalced Carmelites.  “Discalced” means “shoeless” because the nuns wore no shoes in the chapel, recognizing the holiness of the ground there.  She traveled extensively to promote the reform, and eventually founded sixteen monasteries of women who were drawn to her love of Jesus and love of people.  She wrote extensively and is known as a Doctor of the Church.  A Doctor of the Church is a saint whose writings and teachings have had a profound impact on the Church.  There are four women who are known as Doctors of the Church.  The others are Saint Therese of Liseaux, Saint Catherine of Siena, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen.

    Saint Teresa’s life was heavily influenced by her reflection on all that Jesus suffered for us.  Whenever we see the Cross, we too should remember Jesus’ love for us, because it never ends and that love can change our lives.  As Saint Teresa wrote, “If Christ Jesus dwells in a man as his friend and noble leader, that man can endure all things, for Christ helps and strengthens us and never abandons us. He is a true friend.”

  • Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It certainly seems like Jesus was being a little harsh with the people in today’s Gospel reading.  They weren’t even alive, most likely, when the prophets were killed.  But the prophets were, indeed, killed by their ancestors, and now they are building memorials to those prophets, while still ignoring the prophets’ message.

    And the thing is, they could have had an “out.”  They could have been forgiven for those ancestral, societal sins, by simply turning to the Word of God present among them, repenting of their sins, and entering the kingdom of God.  But, instead, predictably, the Pharisees and scribes try to detain Jesus, the Word of God, and interrogate him, so that they could have something against them

    We have to be on the lookout for any trace of this behavior in us.  We can’t double down on the sins of those who have murdered the prophets by neglecting the poor and the marginalized and refusing to be of service to others.  We have to put our worship into practice and distance ourselves from the scribes and Pharisees who focused on lip service to the law and their own convenience, rejecting the word of God proclaimed to them.

    And we have to be particularly observant of the prophets we have heard, because, unlike those who murdered the prophets who just heard the word of God, we have the Word of God, Jesus Christ, in our midst: on our tongues and in our hearts.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Like many of you, when I take a vacation somewhere with natural beauty, I am always amazed at it.  For several years, my family used to vacation up in Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan.  I was always in awe to see the sun rise over the lake, or after a rain, to see the sometimes double rainbows that appear.  Whenever I am in awe like that, I think about our wonderful creator God who put all that in place.  I am always doubly convinced that nothing like that could ever have come about as the result of chance or coincidence or random serendipity.  I am reminded that God is beauty itself, and that this is a dim reflection of Eden, or perhaps just a glimpse of the beauty of the Kingdom.

    So how is it that some people miss that?  It’s too bad that they do, because today’s first reading seems to suggest that we will all be held accountable for God’s revelation in nature.  Even if someone is not churched, they must still be able to see God in nature, and would thus be held accountable for knowing and acknowledging the creator God.  The Church recognizes this revelation and prays that it would be a first step in bringing a person to the Gospel.

    For those of us in the Church, we are responsible for acknowledging and loving the beauty of God all around us.  We should see God in every created thing and in every created person.  We do not then, as St. Paul warns the Romans, worship the created thing.  Instead we worship and glorify our Creator who made beauty known among us and let that beauty be part of the revelation of his love for us.

  • Pope Saint John XXIII

    Pope Saint John XXIII

    The firstborn son of a farming family in Sotto il Monte, near Bergamo in northern Italy, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was always proud of his down-to-earth roots.  After his ordination in 1904, Fr. Roncalli returned to Rome for canon law studies.  He soon worked as his bishop’s secretary, Church history teacher in the seminary, and as publisher of the diocesan paper.

    His service as a stretcher-bearer for the Italian army during World War I gave him a firsthand knowledge of war.  In 1921, Fr. Roncalli was made national director in Italy of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.  In 1925, he became a papal diplomat, serving first in Bulgaria, then in Turkey, and finally in France.  With the help of Germany’s ambassador to Turkey, Archbishop Roncalli helped save an estimated 24,000 Jewish people.

    Named a cardinal and appointed patriarch of Venice in 1953, he was finally a residential bishop.  A month short of entering his 78th year, Cardinal Roncalli was elected pope, taking the name John after his father and the two patrons of Rome’s cathedral, St. John Lateran.  Pope John took his work very seriously but not himself.  His wit soon became proverbial, and he began meeting with political and religious leaders from around the world.  In 1962, he was deeply involved in efforts to resolve the Cuban missile crisis.

    His most famous encyclicals were Mother and Teacher (1961) and Peace on Earth (1963).  Pope John XXIII enlarged the membership in the College of Cardinals and made it more international.  At his address at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, he criticized the “prophets of doom” who “in these modern times see nothing but prevarication and ruin.”  Pope John XXIII set a tone for the Vatican II when he said, “The Church has always opposed… errors.  Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity.”

    On his deathbed, Pope John said: “It is not that the gospel has changed; it is that we have begun to understand it better.  Those who have lived as long as I have…were enabled to compare different cultures and traditions, and know that the moment has come to discern the signs of the times, to seize the opportunity and to look far ahead.”  “Good Pope John” died on June 3, 1963. Saint John Paul II beatified him in 2000, and Pope Francis canonized him in 2014. Five years ago, I had the opportunity to celebrate Mass at the tomb of Saint John XXIII in Saint Peter’s Basilica.  What a privilege to be in the presence of a pastor-saint who loved the Church enough to set her on a course of renewal in what many of us would consider to be our retirement years!  It’s a great reminder that we’re always called to be productive disciples no matter what our age.