Caritas Christi Urget Nos

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  • Saint Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

    Saint Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

    Many of us probably can remember building sand castles in our youth. We learned pretty quickly that there was always a price to pay for laying the foundation of it too near the water. It might go well for a while, but one good wave, and all our hard work would be washed away.  Well, the same is true for our spiritual lives.  Perhaps for a while we are offering our prayers on the run, not really taking time to be with the Lord.  That might work okay for a while, but all it takes is the wave of one good trial or crisis, and everything we think we’ve built up is gone.  We find ourselves lost, scattered by the disarray of our spiritual lives.  Building that firm foundation is extremely important, and it’s something we can never fake.

    St. Cornelius knew that well.  He was elected pope after a 14 month vacancy in the office, because of all the infighting in the Church at the time.  He had to mediate many crises, most especially the heresy of Novationism, which denied that anyone who sinned could be reconciled.  Because of his stand, his detractors elected the first anti-pope, and had Cornelius exiled to Civitavecchia, where he died as a result of his exile.  His friend, St. Cyprian, a bishop, was also involved in the Novation controversy.  He too was exiled in the persecution of Valerian, and martyred on September 14, 258.

    We honor Saints Cornelius and Cyprian today, two men who built their faith on solid foundation.  With that foundation, they were able to work for Church unity, withstand heresies, persecution, exile and martyrdom, and come at last to the heavenly kingdom.  May we, like them, build our spiritual lives on firm foundation so that we may withstand whatever persecutions life may bring our way.

  • The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

    The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

    Today’s readings

    In a lot of ways, this is a strange feast we are celebrating today. Think about it. This is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, which in Jesus’ day would have been as big an oxymoron as one could possibly imagine. No cross would ever have been thought exalted in that day.  That’s why they nailed Jesus to it: they thought by putting an end to him in such a horrible way, no one would ever speak his name again. It’s like us saying that we are going to celebrate the exaltation of a lethal injection chamber. There is nothing exalted about an instrument of execution: it’s tortuous, humiliating, and as dark as one can get.

    So to get from that to where we are now is nothing short of a miracle. A miracle, of course, of the highest order! God used this instrument of punishment to remit the punishment we deserved for our sins. God used the epitome of darkness to bathe the world in unfathomable light.

    And he didn’t have to. The cross is what we deserved for our many sins. Today’s first reading gives us just a glimpse into the problem. The Israelites, fresh from deliverance from slavery in Egypt, are making their way through the desert. Along the way, they pause to complain that God’s food, which he provided in the desert, wasn’t good enough for them. They had chosen slavery over deliverance; food that perishes over food that endures unto eternal life.

    But we’re there too, right? We often choose the wrong kind of food, get off the path, and choose slavery to our vices and sins over new life in Christ. In fact it was because of all that that Jesus came to us in the first place. God noticed our brokenness and would not let us remain dead in sin. So to put an end to that cycle of sin and death, he sent his only Son to us to die on that horrible cross, paying the price for our many sins. But, that death may no longer have power over us, he raised him up, cheating the cross and the evil one of their power, and exalting the Holy Cross to the instrument not of our death, but of our salvation.

    Because of the Cross, all of our sadness has been overcome. Disease, pain, death, and sin – none of these have ultimate power over us. Just as Jesus suffered on that Cross, so we too may have to suffer in the trials that this life brings us. But Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to prepare a place for us, a place where there will be no more sadness, death or pain, a place where we can live in the radiant light of God for all eternity. Because of the Cross, we have hope, a hope that can never be taken away.

    The Cross is indeed a very strange way to save the world, but the triumph that came into the world through the One who suffered on the cross is immeasurable. As our Gospel reminds us today, all of this happened because God so loved the world.

    We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

  • The Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I think, as a pastor, the issue I wrestle with most is the suffering that is out there.  People come to me in their suffering, and that is a great privilege, a holy space.  The father in me wants to be able to say a quick prayer and take all the suffering away, but of course, that’s now how this works.  And so I have accompanied parishioners, and even my own family members, as they suffer.  Suffering, unfortunately, is part of our life on earth, and we all do it at some time or another in our lives. 

    A lot of us, truth be told, have the same outlook as Saint Peter.  We don’t want to think about suffering as part and parcel of our life here on earth.  Today’s Gospel tells us that, after leading the Apostles in a little discernment about who Jesus was, Jesus then begins to foretell his own suffering and death.  And we know that that suffering and death was absolutely necessary to pay the price for our sins.  But Peter, and probably the others as well, didn’t want to think about that.  They were still under the thinking about what the Messiah was supposed to be according to Jewish scriptures, and that Messiah wasn’t supposed to suffer and die.  So Peter begins to audaciously rebuke our Lord, and our Lord then rebukes Peter.

    I think this year, we’ve seen an awful lot of suffering.  Many of us have lost loved ones to COVID-19, or have had a loved one pass away from something else during that time, but the pandemic prevented us from accompanying them.  Others have lost massive amounts of business during that time or suffered financially from the economic downturn.  Even if none of that touched our lives, the pandemic affected the way we live from day to day.  Grandparents couldn’t hug their grandchildren.  We were not able to travel or visit loved ones near or far.  Many couldn’t come to church, even when things opened up a bit, and had to avoid large gatherings or public places of any kind due to a concern about their immunity.  We had to re-think absolutely everything we did, and frankly we still are.

    This weekend, I think too, about where I was twenty years ago.  We all remember that fateful, horrible, 9-11 day, when it seemed like the world was crashing down around us.  Nobody traveled in those days either.  In those days, we had to re-think the way we did so many things, and we don’t take our safety for granted in the ways we did before that day.  We also continue to remember the loss of so many people in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania – people whose lives ended quickly at the start of a workday, and those who gave their lives to help others.  There was more than enough suffering to go around on that horrible day.

    And all of that is to say nothing about the day-to-day suffering we all experience.  The illness and loss of loved ones; the brokenness of our families; the loss of a job or opportunity; the effects of sin and addiction, whether our own or that of those close to us.  The list goes on and on.  The real truth of life in this world is that there is suffering, and none of us gets a free pass.  Even Mary, full of grace, had to watch her Son suffer and die.  Even Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus and he himself suffered a terrible, painful, humiliating death.  None of us gets out of this life unscathed.  In some crazy sense, we all are united in the fact that we all suffer, some time and for something.

    And so it is in fact audacious and even offensive that Saint Peter rebukes our Lord for talking about suffering.  Peter himself will suffer a similar fate as that of his Lord, being crucified upside-down.  Every one of us, in some way, has to take up the cross and walk with it, because it is only in doing that that we can make our way to the resurrection.

    I remember a time when I was going through a very difficult time in my priesthood.  One of my good friends came to visit me and brought me a wood carving of Jesus carrying the Cross.  She told me that she hoped it would help me pray through that difficult time and would help me to take up my own cross, as Jesus said we must in today’s Gospel.  Her prayers, and those of so many others, buoyed me up during that time, and reflecting on the Cross made me realize that I had to be there right then, and had to trust our Lord to bring me where I needed to go.

    And the truth of this, friends, is that we have it a lot easier than our Lord did.  We just bear our own suffering; he had to take with him the suffering of every person embroiled in sin in all of time.  We have him to help us take up our crosses and to help make those crosses lighter; he had no one except for Simon of Cyrene who helped him begrudgingly.  His death had to blast open the gates of heaven; we will just get to walk through it, if we follow him and live the gospel.

    Jesus never ever promised to make all our suffering go away.  But he did promise never to abandon us, and he did engage in suffering when he chose to come to earth.  That, friends, is our salvation.  So we have to suffer in this world, we have to deny ourselves and take up the crosses that lay before us.  Because that is the way to follow our Lord who beckons us to come to him.

    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
    but whoever loses his life for my sake
    and that of the gospel will save it.

  • Saint Peter Claver, Missionary Priest

    Saint Peter Claver, Missionary Priest

    Today’s readings

    Saint Peter Claver was ordained in 1615 in what is now Colombia. During that time, the slave trade was vigorous, and the port of Cartagena was a central entry point for African slaves. Ten thousand slaves would pour into Colombia through Cartagena every year under extremely foul conditions. Around a third of them would die in transit.

    Whenever a ship would enter the port, Peter Claver would swing into action. After the slaves were herded out of the ship, Claver plunged in among them with medicine, food, and other supplies. With the help of interpreters he gave basic instructions and assured his brothers and sisters of their human dignity and God’s saving love. During the 40 years of his ministry, Claver instructed and baptized an estimated 300,000 slaves.

    He ministered in the Colombian missions until his death, vowing to be “the slave of the blacks forever.” He died in 1654 and was given a public and pompous funeral by the city magistrates, even though they had previously expressed their displeasure for his ministry to the black outcasts. He was canonized in 1888 and Pope Leo XIII declared him to be the worldwide patron of missionaries to the black peoples.

    In our Gospel reading, Jesus commands us to love by extending ourselves to people we don’t know or perhaps even wouldn’t associate with.  Saint Peter Claver did that by taking care of the basic needs and spiritual welfare of people who arrived in deplorable conditions just to be bought and sold.  Through his care, they at least knew that someone cared about them and that God loved them.  How will we let other people know that today?

  • Labor Day

    Labor Day

    Today’s readings: Genesis 1:26-2:3 | Psalm 90 | 1 Thessalonians 4:1b-2, 9-12 | Matthew 6:31-34

    One of the things that I remember vividly about my childhood is how hard my parents worked. My Dad worked more than one job at a time for several years. And in his main job, he was with the company for well over forty years, finally retiring from the company he worked for since his late teens. My mother, too, worked outside the home, and still does on a part-time basis. They encouraged me to work as well, and the experience of the work I did in my late teens is something that I carried with me throughout my pre-seminary work years, and continue, really, to benefit from to this very day. And that’s how work is supposed to be: participation in God’s creation, enhancing our human dignity, bringing forth our gifts, and helping us to be better people. Work should also help us to sustain our lives and our families, and to provide for their needs, including health care and retirement. The Church has consistently and loudly taught these truths about work ever since Pope Leo XIII’s ground-breaking encyclical Rerum Novarum, published in 1891.

    As we observe Labor Day this year, though, I think we still have work to do on those principles. Far too many people don’t have the resources that work provides. The bishops of our nation publish a yearly Labor Day statement, and this year they write about the fact that so often labor is viewed as a commodity, a thing to be bought and sold, rather than as a participation in the ongoing creative work of God and an expression of the dignity of the human person, which is rightly work’s purpose.  They note that, in the sadness of COVID-19, the national human trafficking hotline handled a 40% increase in calls in the month following stay-at-home orders, especially as seen in communities of color.

    COVID also spiked job loss, and I think just about anyone could think of someone they know or know of who has lost work during the pandemic.  The bishops write: “Adults in lower-income households were more likely to experience employment income loss than those from higher income households. And women accounted for more than half of the job losses during the first seven months of recession, even though they make up less than half of the workforce.”

    They also write about the loss of more than 600,000 people to COVID-19 and the impact that has had on families: “It is especially heartbreaking that up to 43,000 minor children in the U.S. have lost a parent as a result of the pandemic. The families who lost a breadwinner are now more financially vulnerable, with a projected 42 million people in the United States experiencing food insecurity this year, including 13 million children.”

    In response to all this, they call on Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, in which he calls on people of good will to reject “the reality that women are not yet recognized as having the same dignity as men, that racism shamefully continues, and that those who are poor, disabled, unborn, or elderly are often considered dispensable.”  Instead, he invites us to work for an economy that “has at its heart a concern that all of humanity have access to land, lodging, and labor,” which are common aspects of Catholic Social Teaching.

    Finally, the bishops note that “the pandemic has presented us with many shared experiences.”  We’ve been through a lot, together, and they call on us to go forward together in ways that build up every person.  As Pope Francis has said, “Once the present health crisis has passed, the worst reaction would be to fall even more deeply into feverish consumerism and forms of selfish self-protection…”

    And so on this Labor Day it is especially appropriate that we reflect on the Genesis story of the creation of the world, showing the work of our Creator God and the blessedness of the sabbath rest on the seventh day.  We are reminded that all of our work is meant to be an ongoing act of participation of the creation and re-creation of the world by our Creator God.  Our Gospel reading today calls us to get this right, because when we do we can let go of worry and trust that seeking God’s kingdom first, everything will be given to us besides.

    Labor Day is in fact a wonderful time to step back and look at the meaning of work.  Labor Day reminds us that we don’t have permission to write off human labor as some kind of necessary evil or a commodity to be bought and sold.   We are reminded that the economy exists for the good of people, not the other way around.   We must truly venerate all labor, that of our own efforts as well as that of others.  We must vigorously defend the rights and dignity of workers, particularly of the poor and marginalized.  And we must always offer all of this back to our God who created us to be co-creators with him.  May we pray with the Psalmist this day and every day, “Lord give success to the work of our hands!”

  • The Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Jesus’ ministry on earth was all about healing.  Indeed, that’s what he came to do: to heal us, set things right, from the inside out, so that we would be able to enter the Kingdom.  In today’s gospel, he heals a man who has been deaf and mute with the word of command: “Ephphatha!” – “Be opened!”  I have talked about this kind of thing before.  The healing is not here simply for the deaf and mute man.  The healing he intends, the command, “Be opened!” is for those who were there with the man in the Decapolis, and for us too.  Mark brings us this story in his Gospel because ephphatha is what Jesus is about.  He is about healing, and opening up a way for those who have been at odds with God to be back in relationship with him.  So whether the obstacle has been a physical illness or a spiritual one, he commands ephphatha, that the way be opened and the obstacle obliterated, and the illness of the broken one bound up and the way made straight for the person to be in communion with God.

    Saint James today invites us to take a look at the issue from another angle.  Have we pre-judged people who are not like us when they come to the Church, or who come to us at any other time?  Do we look down on those who don’t look like us, dress like us, don’t speak like us, or don’t act like us?  Do these people have illness that needs to be healed?  Or is it we that have the illness, being unable to see them as Christ does, as brothers and sisters and children of God?  Racism, fear of others, and all kinds of stereotypes are such insidious illnesses in our society.  We bring that illness, too, to our Lord: whatever the illness is today, whether it is ours or someone else’s, Jesus commands it: ephphatha, be opened, that nothing may be an obstacle to the love of God and the healing of Jesus Christ.

    Since the readings lead us to a place of healing, I want to take this opportunity to speak of one of the sacraments of healing, namely the Anointing of the Sick.  I want to do that because I think it’s a sacrament that is misunderstood, one that we don’t think of much, until someone is near death, and that’s not exactly what the Anointing of the Sick is all about.  In the days prior to Vatican II, that actually was the understanding of the Sacrament.  It was called Extreme Unction, Latin for “Last Anointing.”  But Vatican II restored the sacrament to a much earlier practice, in which the sacrament was intended for healing, and not just sending the dying person on their way to eternal life.

    The impetus for the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick comes from another passage in the letter of Saint James.  It says: “Is anyone among you sick? He should summon the presbyters of the church, and they should pray over him and anoint (him) with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up.  If he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven.” (James 5:14-15) The sacrament is about healing: physical, sure, but also spiritual.  Having God’s presence in the sacrament with us in our time of illness is of great value – just ask anyone who’s been through it!

    So I’d like to identify a few times when it would be appropriate to have the Anointing of the Sick.  The first is before surgery that is either life threatening itself, or is for the healing of some illness or injury.  Very often people will call, and they might come to a daily Mass before their surgery or the weekend before their surgery, and we will anoint them after Mass.  This is a wonderful time to receive the sacrament, because they’ve just been to Mass and have received the Eucharist. The combination of those sacraments is a great source of grace and healing.  

    Another time someone might be anointed is if they’ve come to the hospital with a life-threatening illness or injury, perhaps even after an accident.  Or perhaps a patient is hospitalized for an addiction or mental illness.  Very often there’s a priest on call at the hospital who can do that, or if it’s one of the local hospitals here, we will be called to go over.  Being anointed at that time of crisis can be a great source of peace to both the patient and their loved ones.

    Another time for the Anointing is when a patient is home bound, or after they’ve come home from having surgery and there is going to be a long time of rehabilitation.  Then a priest might come to the person’s home, anoint them, and then we can arrange for a parishioner to come give them Holy Communion each week.  We have a number of parishioners who help us with that ministry, and it keeps the patient connected to the parish and to the Lord during difficult days.

    The final time for the Anointing is the one that most people think of, and that is near death. At the time of death, we have what is known as the Last Rites.  The Last Rites are a combination of three sacraments: the sacrament of Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, and Viaticum, which is Latin for “bread for the journey,” one’s last Communion.  If at all possible, it’s good if the patient is well enough to participate in all three sacraments, but very often that’s not the case.  Then we just do what we can of them and entrust them to God’s mercy.

    It’s important that we know about the illness so that we can care for the patient.  These days, that means a family member or the patient themselves, must call us.  Hospitals can’t do that any more, due to privacy laws.  So it’s very important that we know, and know soon enough that we can respond.  In a large parish like this, it can be hard for us to respond at the spur of the moment because of other things going on, but we do our best to get there as soon as we can.  And if, unfortunately, a patient dies before the priest can get there, there are still prayers we can do.  Sometimes we don’t know that the patient is going so quickly.  I had that happen just the other day, and we still prayed and I was there to spend some time with the family.

    Here at Saint Mary’s, we also have a periodic celebration of the Anointing of the Sick at Mass, and the next time we will be doing that is two weeks from now, on the weekend of September 18-19, at all the Masses.  Please be sure to bring with you anyone who is in need of the sacrament, either for an ongoing illness or an upcoming surgery.

    The healing work of Christ is what the Church is all about.  Today, Jesus continues to work through the Church to bring healing to all those who need it. He cries out “Ephphatha” that we might all be opened up to his healing work and that every obstacle to relationship with him might be broken down.

  • Pope Saint Gregory the Great

    Pope Saint Gregory the Great

    Saint Gregory showed a great deal of promise at a young age.  He had a stellar political career, becoming prefect of Rome before the age of thirty.  After a short time, he resigned his office and dedicated his life to the priesthood. He joined a Benedictine monastery and became abbot, founding several other monasteries during his time there. Eventually he was called to become the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, and he dedicated his papal ministry to reforming the Church, the Liturgy, and its priests.  He is the one for whom Gregorian Chant is named.  He also spent a good deal of time and money ransoming the political prisoners of the Lombards, and helped to stabilize the social climate somewhat during a time of great strife in the medieval world.

    Of course, there’s always strife in the world.  Whether we measure that in the secular world, noting the many acts of violence throughout the world, and even in our own cities, or if we measure it in our Church, noting the scandals and sadness that has marred our recent history, a lot of what we deal with on a daily basis needs to be set right.  Reform is always needed, or else good institutions become stagnant, and then corrupt.  We look for the intercession of people like Pope Saint Gregory the Great to lead us back to Christ.

  • The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So often, when someone thanks us for something, we might say, “It’s the least I could do.”  As if it were some kind of badge of achievement to do the least thing possible.  I think it’s human nature to try to do as little as possible, without being perceived as lazy or something.  Sometimes we want to do as little as possible, and have others feeling good about it.  Or even worse, and we have seen this throughout the sadness of this pandemic, we want to do what we want to do, no matter how it affects others.  That too, is pretty typical human nature.  I have a right to do whatever is best for me, and if that affects your rights, well, then, too bad.  None of this, friends, is praiseworthy.

    And I think this is what is behind today’s Liturgy of the Word.  Certain things are expected of believers, and over the course of history, people have tried to get away with doing as few of those things as they absolutely need to do.  The first reading sets the stage: Moses places the law before the people and tells them that they are a great nation, because they have a God so close to them, and who loves them enough to give them the whole law that they have received.

    Now, for the Jews, the whole law is more than we might think.  Perhaps when we hear that, we think of the Ten Commandments, to which we also are bound in our discipleship.  But for the Jewish community back then, there were a total of over six hundred laws and precepts that made up the law.  Because of that, there was always this constant discussion over which of the laws was most important, and often people would be concerned more about a tiny little precept than about the whole big picture that God was trying to accomplish.

    This is the attitude Jesus came to address with the Gospel.  He wanted the people to get it right.  He wanted them to have concern for people more than for semantics in the law.  He wanted them to love as God loves, because if we do that, we’ll be keeping the law anyway.  But people didn’t always accept that teaching. If they did, Jesus wouldn’t have had to go to the Cross, and there would have been no need to preach the Gospel, because we’d just always live it to perfection.

    So in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus makes a major correction.  There was this law of purifying vessels before festivals, which is not unlike the way the priest washes his hands before the Eucharistic Prayer or the way that the vessels for Mass are purified after Communion.  But somewhere along the way, the precept got mangled, and everyone was bound to scrupulously wash themselves and every vessel they owned before a feast.  And Jesus chastises them for having more concern about a human tradition than about the real intent of the law.

    The real intent of the law was obviously something way more important, way more personal.  The real intent of that purification was the purification of our hearts.  Jesus gives a rather horrifying list of sins at the end of the Gospel reading and notes that these are the things that defile; not some dirt on the outside of a cup or hands that had not been scrupulously cleaned.  If we want to really purify ourselves for the festival, which is to say the Eucharist, then we have to be cleansed of our sins.  That’s why we have the Sacrament of Penance, right?

    James, in the second reading, picks up on the theme.  If we really want to be thought to be wise in regard to keeping the law, then we have to keep ourselves unstained by the world, which would be the same thing as Jesus was saying, but also to care for those in need, with which Jesus would certainly not disagree!  Indeed, that’s what was really at stake in the Gospel reading: people were more concerned about the minutiae of the Law than they were for securing justice for all God’s people.

    The thing is, we are hearers of the Word.  We have experienced the love of our Lord in so many ways.  Everything that we have is a gift to us.  We have to be wise in regard to all that, and to be certain that we keep the whole of the law.  Not just those little minutiae, but the very spirit of the law, the law of love which binds all disciples and all people of good will.  Because when we lose sight of that, the whole Church and all of society can go off the rails.

    So our reflection in these days has to be on where and how we need to realign ourselves with the Law of love and resolve to live it more faithfully.  Because, as the Psalmist says today, it is they who do justice who will live in the presence of the Lord.  And that’s just where we all want to be.

  • Saint Monica

    Saint Monica

    Today’s readings

    We need prayer warriors in our lives.  Maybe you’re even the prayer warrior among your friends and family, if they know you are up at 6:30 in the morning to come to Church on a regular basis!  For all the prayer warriors out there, today is the memorial of their patron saint, Saint Monica.  Saint Monica was a woman in love with God and the Church, and her family, although the latter was pretty difficult for her.  But her persistent prayer won them for Christ and the Church.

    Although she was a Christian, her parents gave her in marriage to a pagan, Patricius, who lived in her hometown of Tagaste in North Africa.  Patricius had some redeeming features, but he had a violent temper.  Monica also had to bear with a cantankerous mother-in-law who lived in her home.  Monica’s prayers and example finally won her husband and mother-in-law to Christianity.  Her husband died in 371, one year after having been baptized.

    Her oldest son was famously an even greater challenge.  That would be tomorrow’s saint, Saint Augustine.  After his father’s death, Augustine had embraced a heresy, and was living a rather immoral life.  For a while, Saint Monica refused to let him eat or sleep in her house.  Then one night she had a vision that assured her Augustine would return to the faith. From that time on she stayed close to her son, praying and fasting for him. 

    So, spoiler alert for tomorrow, Monica’s fervent prayers brought that vision to fulfillment, and Augustine not only became a faithful Catholic, but also a bishop.  Not long after that, Monica knew her life was near the end.   She told Augustine, “Son, nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled.” She became ill shortly after and suffered severely for nine days before her death.

    Monica was a woman who accomplished much by her persistent prayer. It might be well for us today to ask for a portion of her spirit of prayer that we might accomplish God’s glory in our own time and place.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When I was little, I often remember my grandmother saying “thank God for small favors!” Now that’s a holy and pious thought, and I’ll have you know my grandmother was certainly holy and pious. But when she said it, it was usually because someone had just done the least they could possibly do, or something they should have done long ago. So the sense of the saying was more like, “could you spare it?” or “well, finally!” Still, I love that phrase, “thank God for small favors” because it reminds us that everything, no matter how big or small, is God’s gift to us, and we should be grateful for it.

    One of the most important marks of the Christian disciple is thankfulness. St. Paul was a man of thanksgiving, and we see that theme often in his letters. He may berate his communities when they were missing the point, but he would always also praise them for their goodness, and see that as an opportunity to thank God for giving the community grace. Today, it’s the Thessalonian Church for whom he is grateful. He praises them for their great faith and then says, “What thanksgiving, then, can we render to God for you, for all the joy we feel on your account before our God?” Because it’s always God at work in the believer and never the believer all on his or her own. It’s grace, and we are thankful for grace.

    God continues to work his grace in our community as well. We are a community of faith, and we see that faith in action in the many ministries of the parish, especially now as many of them are coming back after the pandemic. But even more than that, we see that faith in action in our workplaces, communities, schools and homes. There is never a time when we are not disciples. We are grateful for God’s grace working in and through us in every situation. The word “Eucharist” means thanksgiving, as we have often been taught, and so the heart of even the most basic and solemn parts of our worship is thanksgiving. We are thankful for all favors, big and small!