Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: blessing

  • Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We’ve just had this Gospel reading in the Sunday readings in the last couple of weeks, so I thought I’d touch on a few verses that I didn’t go into in that homily.  And these are some of the most powerful words in Scripture for me, and always a challenge for me:

    “But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
    and your ears, because they hear.
    Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
    longed to see what you see but did not see it,
    and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

    Sometimes we just overlook the blessing of every moment, don’t we?  We might be in the midst of a really good time in our lives.  We get to see new birth, restoration, healing, joy, laughter, and celebration.  But in the midst of all that, we can in fact become jaded to it.  Perhaps we even feel entitled to it and the blessing of it stops registering for us.

    Or maybe we’re in the midst of a really lousy time.  Maybe we are seeing death, degradation, sickness, brokenness, pain, weeping and grief.  And we can be real angry about that, overlooking the care that is extended to us, from the kind words, to the thoughtful deeds, or even just the loving embrace.  We miss the blessings of those hard times a lot.

    But regardless, in every moment of every day, we get to see things and hear things that others have not been privileged to see and hear.  We get to love and rejoice and persevere in whole new ways every single day.  Whether the times are good or bad, the moments are always blessed by our God who walks with us through every experience.  We have to take the time to see and hear those blessings, because the destruction of our soul that happens when we miss it is just irreparable.  So many have longed to see and hear what we have seen and heard.  Blessed are our eyes, blessed are our ears, blessed are we!

  • Monday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    What I think the folks in our first reading need to learn – and maybe us too – is that the spiritual life is always about the big picture.  The Israelites in today’s reading have completely rejected the God of their salvation.  God had taken them from abject slavery in Egypt, in which they were oppressed beyond anything we could possibly imagine – let alone endure – and led them through the desert, through the Red Sea (covering the pursuing Egyptians in the process), and into safety.  He is going to give them the Promised Land, but they, thank you very much, would prefer to return to Egypt so that they no longer have to sustain themselves on the bread that they have from the very hand of God himself.  They would rather have meat and garlic and onions, and whatever, than freedom and blessing from God.  What a horrible, selfish people they have become.

    And Moses is no better.  He alone has been allowed to go up the mountain to be in the very presence of God.  No one else could get so close to God and live to tell the story.  God has given him the power to do miraculous deeds in order to lead the people.  And yet, when things get tough, he too would prefer death than to be in the presence of God.

    And aren’t we just like them sometimes?  It’s easy to have faith when things are going well, and we are healthy, and our family is prospering.  But the minute things come along to test us, whether it is illness, or death of a loved one, or job troubles, or whatever, it’s hard to keep faith.  “Where is God when I need him?” we might ask.  We just don’t often have the spiritual attention spans to see the big picture.  We forget the many blessings God has given us, and ask “Well what has he done for me lately?”

    In today’s Gospel, Jesus feeds the crowds until they are satisfied and have baskets of leftovers besides.  God’s blessings to us are manifold, and it is good to meditate on them when times are good, and remember them when times are bad.  God never wills the trials we go through, and he never forgets or abandons us when we are in the midst of those trials.  God feeds us constantly with finest wheat.  That’s the big picture, and we must never lose sight of it.

  • Thursday after Ash Wednesday

    Thursday after Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    When it comes right down to it, we have a choice.  We can choose life or death, blessing or curse, the way of the Cross or the way of the world.  The choice that we make has huge consequences, eternal consequences.  The stakes are big ones, and we must choose wisely.

    Many of us can probably recall some point in our lives where we had to make that choice of what we were going to do with our lives, what we wanted to be when we grew up.  That choice can be so confusing, so painful, so difficult to make.  When it finally worked for me was when I finally gave it over to God and asked that he challenge me in a big way.  That’s when I felt the call to go to seminary, which really surprised me, and I really resisted that at first.  But when I finally gave in, when I finally decided to do what God asked me to do, the choice was much easier.  We all need that kind of guidance from the Holy Spirit, and that’s what gets us through those difficult choices in our lives.

    The command from Deuteronomy is clear: “Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.”  The way of the Lord is life-giving, the way of the world is death.  The way of the Lord is blessing, the way of the world is curse.  The passing pleasures of the world are nothing compared to the eternal pleasures of God’s way.  The trials we may experience in this life when we choose to follow God are passing things, and give way to great grace and peace.

    Jesus asks us today to make a choice to take up our crosses and follow him.  That’s not always so appealing on a day-to-day basis.  There is great suffering in the cross.  But, as he says, what profit is there for us if we gain the whole world but lose our very selves?  Blessed, the Psalmist tells us, is the one who walks in the way of the Lord and follows not the counsel of the wicked.  May we all this day choose life, that we and our descendants might live.

  • Saturday of the Twenty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The question Saint Paul asks the Corinthians in today’s first reading is a challenging one: what do you have that you have not received?  For us in a society steeped in entitlement, this question rings like an accusation.

    We may be justly proud of what we have learned and achieved and accomplished, because in attaining those things, we have used our gifts to their potential.  However, as Christians, we must never be overly inflated with pride in those things because we must always remember that we achieved them because God gave us the ability and the opportunity.  What do we have that we have not received?  What have we learned that God has not revealed?  What have we accomplished that God has not blessed?

    Very early in my priesthood, I was somewhat embarrassed when people would tell me how much a homily had touched them or how moved they were by the way I celebrated Mass.  I was very conscious of the fact that nothing I had done was done without God’s grace.  A brother priest told me he responded to those things by saying “praise God!” because that acknowledged that it was accomplished with God’s grace.

    Maybe that’s a good lesson for all of us.  When we are complimented for something we’ve done or accomplished, we may well be proud of it.  But we may also well be grateful for all God has done in us to bring us to that point.  In our gratitude and love for God, maybe we can all respond to those compliments, “praise God!”

  • Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    This morning, the prophet Jeremiah is urgently reminding the people Israel – and us too! – that every good thing we have, every blessing we receive, all of it comes from the Lord God Almighty.  Israel was trying to find blessing in the strange gods of the peoples around them, the baals.  But we have our own baals too, I think, our own strange gods in which we try to find blessing.  Whether it’s possessions or wealth or prestige or career, or whatever else tends to get in the way of our relationship with God, none of these baals will ever grant us blessing.  “You alone have done all these things,” Jeremiah observes.  Sometimes I think we all need to take a step back and make that same observation.

  • Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes God’s blessings can be challenging.  For example, we might not think that those who are meek and those who mourn are blessed.  And we certainly wouldn’t celebrate the blessings of those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, would we?  It’s even more challenging when we remember that the word “blessed” in Scripture could also be translated as “happy.”  Would we think of those people as happy?  Probably not, but God does.

    Elijah the Tishbite knew this blessing of God too.  The prophet’s job is always a demanding one.  It’s one of great blessing, because the prophet is called by God and formed from his mother’s womb.  But it’s also a great challenge: people don’t usually want to hear what a prophet says – after all, if they were open to the message, a prophet probably wouldn’t be necessary – and quite often the prophets were chased out of town, beaten, and even murdered.  Elijah’s job was going to be challenging, but it would also be blessed: God provided for his needs at Wadi Cherith and at the end of his life, whisked him off to heaven in a chariot of fire.

    So it’s important for us to remember, I think, that while God never promises to make our lives free and easy, he does promise to bless us.  He will bless us with whatever gifts we need to do the work he has called us to do, the work for which he formed us in our mother’s womb.  The happiness of the blessing might not come in this life, but we who do God’s will can  look forward to our reward, which Jesus promises will be great, in heaven.

  • Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    All this talk of beatings aside, I think the scariest words in today’s Gospel come right at the end of the reading:  “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”  Think about how much we all have.  Even in a tough economy, we have much more than most people in the world.  That’s a wonderful blessing, but it does mean that so much will be demanded of us.  Demanded.  But then it can be demanded, because the blessings have been so freely given.  We may feel inadequate to the task, we may shrink before the demands.  But we have no reason to do so, because, as the Psalmist tells us, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

  • Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s gospel reading is a rather heartbreaking story, to be honest.  The rich young man is obviously a follower of the law and a religious man, because he is able to talk to Jesus about his observance.  But when Jesus tells him to let go of what he has in order to gain eternal life, he walks away dejected because he has so much.  We don’t know what ultimately happens to the rich young man.  Maybe he did go and begin the hard work of letting go, selling his possessions and giving to the poor.  And maybe he just couldn’t do it.  But at least he knows what he has to do.

    I think that far more heartbreaking than this story of the rich young man is the story of modern men and women, rich and not-so-rich, young and old alike.  I am more heartbroken for these because as much as the rich young man in the gospel story asked what he had to do to gain eternal life, too many of today’s men and women have lost the desire even to ask the question.

    We too are rich men and women, young and old.  Maybe we don’t think we have much, but we have way more than most people in most parts of the world.  We live in one of the richest counties of the richest nation on earth, and what we have is considerable.  If we too were told to go, sell what we have, and give to the poor so that we could have eternal life, most of us wouldn’t even know where to start.  But to be honest, so many people are not even there yet.  So many don’t even bother to ask what it takes to gain eternal life.  Many more don’t bother to live the requirements of religion, and even more don’t even know what those requirements are.

    We may be rich in the things of earth, but, as the story tells us, we are so very poor in the things of eternity.  “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”

    I hope your heart is breaking too.  These are not words of joy and blessing that Jesus is speaking to us today.  They are words of challenge.  He wants to light a fire under us and smack us full force out of our complacency.  “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”  So many people are not with us here at Mass today.  Whether it’s soccer or football or work or sloth, they are missing, and our gathering is the poorer for it.  Many of them will feel guilty about missing, perhaps some of them will even confess it.  But far too many of them don’t care or don’t even know that they should care.  How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

    People today, even maybe some of us gathered here today, are so greatly focused on getting ahead, becoming rich in the things of earth, skyrocketing our careers, being well thought of – we are so embarrassingly rich in all these ways.  But none of those things are going to get us into heaven, into the kingdom of God.  We are all being told today to go, sell those paltry, fading glory things and give to those who are poorer, so that we can all enter the kingdom of God together.  Will we too walk away, like the rich young man in the gospel, dejected and depressed because we have too much to let go of it all?  How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

    In this respect life month, we might find we are too rich in other ways as well.  We may cling to the way that we’re thought of and so encourage or at least look the other way when a mother ends a pregnancy.  Or we’re so concerned about the value of our homes and the safety of our riches that we tolerate the death penalty.  Or the care of a loved one takes us away from our work so we don’t care for those loved ones the way we should.  But we are a people who are gifted with life from conception to natural death, and we are called to reverence that life and celebrate that gift.  We have to let go of anything that gets in the way of that.  How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

    Taking hold of the kingdom of God necessarily means we have to let go of something.  That is the clear message of today’s gospel reading.  What we have to let go of is different for all of us, but clearly there is a rich young man or woman in all of us, and we have to be ready to give up whatever gets in our way, or what we will end up letting go of is the kingdom of God.  And that would be truly, horribly, unforgivably heartbreaking.

    “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”

    And so what do we do?  Do we give up, throw up our hands, and walk away dejected because we know it’s all too much – that what we have to let go of is beyond our capacity to do it?  No.  For us, truly, it may be impossible.  But nothing is impossible for God.  God hears that desire for eternal life in us and opens up the way to salvation.  He gave his Son to live our life and die our death and rise to new life that lasts forever.  That same glory is intended for all of us too.  All we have to do is let go – as frightening as that may well be for us – let go, and let God worry about the implications of it all.

    And Jesus points out that this will not be easy.  Those who give up their riches to follow him will receive blessing, but also challenge: they will receive “receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters
    and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.”  There will be persecution in this life.  Not everyone will get why we are letting go.  And that makes the letting go so much more difficult.  But the rewards of a hundredfold here and a googol-fold in the kingdom are worth it.

    And so yes, I come here heartbroken today.  “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!”  But I know that God can make it possible in every person’s life.  All they and we have to do is let go of those things that are of fleeting and fading glory.  Because we’re going to need empty hands if we are ever to be able to hold on to the hundred-fold blessing that God wants us to have.

  • Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    During the summer before my final year of seminary, I worked as a hospital chaplain.  It ended up being a pretty rough summer for me and the other men and women in the student chaplain group: we had a record number of deaths and tragic accidents to deal with, and it was, as you might expect, getting us pretty down.  Then for morning prayer one day, one of my fellow students brought in today’s Gospel, and we reflected especially on the end part of the reading:

    “But blessed are your eyes, because they see,

    and your ears, because they hear.

    Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people

    longed to see what you see but did not see it,

    and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

    The more we explored that reading, the more we became aware that, even in the midst of all of the very real tragedy we were experiencing, we were also experiencing some very real great blessing.  How true that is for all of us in life.  We tend to dwell on the negative things we are seeing, and no one would ever doubt that we all have to see some pretty rotten stuff in our lives, some people it seems more so than others.  But the problem comes when we let go of the blessing that comes too.  We people of faith have to be convinced that God is with us even in, perhaps especially in, our darkest moments, and gives us glimpses of the kingdom of God that perhaps others don’t get to see.  Blessed are our eyes when we get to see them!

    The people in Moses’ day didn’t ever really get to see God.  They got to see Moses, who sort of acted as an intermediary for them with God.  No one else could see God and live.  But our eyes do get to see God.  We can see God in the Eucharist, we can see God in the person sitting next to us, we can see God in the graced moments of our day.  Maybe we just need to open our eyes to see God more often, but he is there, longing to bless our eyes with the vision of him.

  • Friday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “Lord, if you wish you can make me clean.” In some ways, that is the biggest understatement in all of Scripture. We would say to the leper, “of course God can make you clean, God can do anything God wants to do.” But for the leper, I think it’s less of an understatement than it is a statement of faith. He has obviously heard of or maybe has even seen some of Jesus’ other mighty deeds, and he is expressing the faith that Jesus can help him. The big “if” for him, though is the “if you wish” part. And of course, Jesus does wish, and he is made clean.

    In our first reading, God wishes to bless Abraham and Sarah too. They display far less faith than our leper, but in their defense, they are new to the whole experience of God. They would be happy enough for God to just bless them through Ishmael. But God intends to do more for the aged couple: he will give them a child through Sarah. Abraham laughs in the face of such overwhelming blessing. But it is God who has the last laugh: he indeed gives them a son through Sarah, whom they are to name “Isaac,” which in Hebrew means, “God laughs.”

    God can do anything God wishes. Nothing is an obstacle for God, except perhaps for our lack of faith. If we have the faith that our leper had in the Gospel reading, we might well be amused to see what God can do in us and through us and among us. That doesn’t mean every whim of ours will be God’s pleasure, but it does mean that the ways he blesses us might make us all laugh for joy.