Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: Discipleship

  • Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    Today’s readings

    I have to say, this is a slightly odd selection of readings that we have today.  Zechariah’s prophecy in the first reading sounds like something from Palm Sunday, which in fact it is.  This is the reading quoted in the Gospel of Matthew that we had at the beginning of the Palm Sunday Mass.  The second reading from Saint Paul to the Romans sounds like something from Lent.  And in fact, it is.  During Lent we hear from this letter and we have hope that we who have been dead in sin can be raised up with Christ at Easter.  Then we have the reading from Matthew’s Gospel, which I’ve already preached on twice this week: once for a funeral, and once for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart on Friday.  So it might seem a little strange to hear these things on a muggy Fourth of July Weekend.

    But what at first glance seems like an odd mix is really part of the toolbox that we get during these summer weekends of the Church year.  We turn back to Ordinary Time Sundays today, for the first time since Lent began back in March.  We’re wearing the familiar green vestments, and we’re getting back to the ordered Sundays of the year.  Now that we can take a breather from the special things we celebrated during the Lent and Easter Seasons, and on the past two Sundays with the Holy Trinity and the Body and Blood of Christ, we get to read in the Scriptures about the ways that we should be living the Christian life.

    These are what I like to call “discipleship Sundays” because they teach us how to be disciples, followers of Christ.  In the readings during the summer we get to put together a toolbox of sorts that helps us to live the Gospel.  So today, in this seemingly odd mix of readings, I think the tool that we get is the tool of humility.

    Now as I say that, I think I can hear some of us thinking, “Well, no thanks, actually.  I may just leave that particular tool in the toolbox.”  Because being a person of humility can be seen as something of a character flaw.  For decades, maybe even longer, our culture has encouraged us to toot our own horn, to look out for number one.  “Believe in yourself” has been the mantra of Oprah and Doctor Phil and all those other so-called gurus.  But we have to remember that we have not been breathed into existence in the image of Oprah or Doctor Phil.  We have been created in the image and likeness of God, and so we need to emulate our God as closely as we can.

    What does our God look like?  Well, Zechariah gives us a pretty clear portrait today:  “See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, meek, and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.”  So our Savior was prophesied to be meek and just, and far from coming into the city riding on a mighty horse of a king, he comes in on a donkey, the beast of burden employed by the poor.  And that’s just how Jesus was, wasn’t he?  Since this reading is quoted in the Gospel for Palm Sunday, our minds turn to Palm Sunday and we can picture Jesus entering Jerusalem on a poor donkey.  The crowds want to crown him king, but the only throne he takes is the cross.  Jesus was a model of humility.

    And that’s just what Jesus invites us to in today’s Gospel.  He invites us to take his yoke upon our shoulders.  A yoke back then was an implement that kept the oxen together so they could work the fields.  So a yoke implies a few things.  First, it’s going to be work.  That’s what yokes are for.  So when Jesus says he’s going to give us rest, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be some work involved.  Second, a yoke meant that more than one animal was working; they were working together.  So as we take Jesus’ yoke upon us, we are yoked to him, he calls us to work for the kingdom, but never expects us to go it alone.  That’s why his burden is easy and light: it’s still a burden, but we never ever bear it alone, Christ is always with us.

    Since he is always with us, that circles us back to humility.  If we are not going it alone, that means that we can’t take the credit for the mighty things we do in Jesus’ name.  Yes, we do great things, but we do them because he has transformed us and has taken the yoke with us.  We are no longer men and women in the flesh, as Saint Paul says today, we are people of the Spirit, with the Spirit of Christ in us, and so in Christ we cast aside those deeds of darkness and, taking his yoke, we accomplish the work Jesus has given us.  Saint Augustine once said, “Humility must accompany all our actions, must be with us everywhere; for as soon as we glory in our good works they are of no further value to our advancement in virtue.”

    And that is our goal as disciples: to advance in virtue.  Some days, that’s very hard work.  But we never have to go it alone, if we are truly humble people working in the image of our God.

     

  • Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel gives us a bit of a glimpse as to how Jesus’ day-to-day ministry worked.  One of the things we certainly notice is the meticulous mention of the women that were among his followers.  In a day where a woman’s participation in anything of a public nature would be totally frowned upon, Jesus reached out to women, and brought them into his ministry.  Certainly the Evangelist would never have mentioned it if it weren’t important to the Gospel itself.

    We come here today for Mass, aware that our God seeks us out in little and big ways every single day.  We too want to be close to him, and respond as did the Twelve, the women, and the “many others.”  We disciples long to be among those who serve our Lord and are caught up in his ministry.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I’ve heard it said that the only one of the disciples Jesus called that day was Judas Iscariot, and we all know how that worked out.  We don’t know what God considers qualification for discipleship, we just know that somehow, for some reason, we have been called to do whatever it is that we are meant to do in life.  We probably don’t have all the skills necessary to accomplish it, but that’s okay.  If we were able to accomplish everything on our own then we wouldn’t need God, wouldn’t need a Savior.  Thank God that we both need and have him in our lives, and that he has called us all to share in the work of discipleship in some way.

  • The Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary time [C]

    The Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary time [C]

    Today’s readings

    Jesus tells us some things about discipleship today that, quite honestly, I think might make a person think twice about becoming a disciple.  The first two come right at the beginning of the gospel reading: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”  And then, right at the end, he says: “Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”  He’s pretty clear: if we’re not willing to do these things, then we cannot be his disciples.

    How does that make you feel?  Are you willing to hate those closest to you for the sake of the Gospel?  Would you take up your cross, knowing what happened to him when he did it, and come after him?  Think of the things that you have that you love: are you willing to renounce them in order to follow Christ?  Today’s Gospel is incredibly challenging, to say the least.  Maybe I should say it’s incredibly unsettling.  We might find ourselves totally willing to be Jesus’ followers, but at what cost?

    And that’s the point of the parables he tells.  Who is going to build a building without first calculating how much it would cost to build it to be certain there is adequate funding?  Most of us have probably passed by some commercial buildings that started going up, only to be later abandoned, or that took quite a bit of time to build, possibly because the funding dried up.  So we’re not unfamiliar with the metaphor here.  Or if you were a military leader going into battle, don’t you estimate what the adversary is brining to the battle to be sure that you can be victorious?  Bringing it down a notch, think of a coach scouting out the other team to see how they play.

    In any of these situations, it is absolutely necessary to calculate the cost.  Not to do so would be foolish.  The same is true of discipleship.  There is a cost to discipleship.  Those first disciples, almost without exception, paid for it at the cost of their lives.  Preaching in the name of Jesus was a dangerous thing to do, but they calculated the cost and realized it was worth it, and they did die.  Praise God for their faithfulness to the mission despite the cost; had they not been faithful we might not have the faith.

    For us modern disciples, should we choose to follow him, there will be a cost too.  We might not get nailed to a cross as some of those early disciples did and have to pay for it with our lives.  But there will be a cross to bear.  We might have relationships that get in the way.  We might have things that we own that tie us too closely to the world and get in the way of our relationship with Christ.  Those will have to go.  That is the cost for us, and today we’re being asked if we are willing to pay it.

    So how far do we take this?  Do we really have to hate our families?  Do we have to sell everything we own?  Do we have to take up the cross in such a way that we become doormats for those whose views are different from ours?  How much of the cost do we ourselves really need to pay?
    We certainly know that Jesus – who loved his mother and father very much – did not mean that we were to alienate ourselves from our families.  But there may be relationships in our lives that are obstacles to the Gospel.  Maybe we’d gossip less if we didn’t hang out with people who brought that out of us.  That would certainly help us to be better disciples.  Maybe we’re in friendships or casual relationships that lead us to drink too much, or see the wrong kind of movies, or that draw us away from the healthy relationships we have.  Those relationships have to end if we are to follow Christ more fully.  Anything that gets in the way of our relationship with God and our ability to follow him in whatever way he’s called us has to go right now.  Ruthlessly put an end to it now, because otherwise we give up the life to which we are called, the life that is better than even these things that we might enjoy very much.

    Our first reading speaks about God’s wisdom.  It’s so hard for us to understand that our own world most days, let alone understand the things of heaven.  We just don’t have the mind of God.  Our minds are very good, the best on the planet, but they aren’t enough.  Steven Hawking is one of the smartest people in our world right now, but when he talks about religion, he’s an absolute fool.  His current contention that the world doesn’t need a God to create it and run it is absolutely backwards, but that’s another homily.  The point is that we cannot ever understand the things of this world, or the world to come, unless God reveals them.  We have a deep and unquenchable need for his wisdom.  The more of it we have, the more we know that we need it.

    God’s wisdom can help us to put our relationships, our possessions, the cost of discipleship, in proper perspective.  We have to beseech God day and night to give us the wisdom to live life the right way.  If we think we can go without it, we are fools too.  Wisdom is the tool that we are being offered for our discipleship toolbox today; we just have to gratefully accept it.

    Our Liturgy of the Word today reminds us that following the Gospel on our own terms is not possible. The call to discipleship is one that calls us to step out of our comfort zone, leave behind whatever ties us to the world and separates us from God, and follow our Savior wherever he leads us. So if our only sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom of God is maybe getting out of bed and coming to Church on Sunday, then Jesus is telling us today that’s not enough.  It is a good start, but we have to reflect with wisdom on those things that are getting in the way, because it’s time we gave them up.

    As we present our gifts today, God gives us the gift of wisdom.  How we live our lives this week will be the test of the way we’ve put that gift into action.

  • Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I have to confess that part of me dislikes the Gospel reading we have today.  Dislike is probably too strong a word: it just kind of makes me uneasy.  That’s because I don’t like the idea that there is some kind of competition between the duties of hospitality and the joy of contemplation in the Lord’s presence.  That’s how this reading often comes across, and I find that difficult to accept.  When I have guests over, I take it seriously.  According to my family custom, there is plenty – perhaps too much – food, and I try to make my guests comfortable.  That takes work – anyone who has ever had guests for dinner knows that, but I think it’s time well spent.

    I’m also not wild about the idea that some often draw the conclusion that this reading places a higher priority on contemplation and prayer over the duties of ministry.  Stuff needs to get done; we don’t just show up and have beautiful Liturgy happen.  I think that if all we did was pray all day, we’d never get any of the Gospel done, and I don’t think that’s what our Lord intended.

    Fortunately, I don’t think these are valid conclusions to be drawn from today’s Gospel – although I do think these conclusions are frequently drawn.  And that’s sad for any of us who want to be in relationship with our Lord and yet know that there are the duties of our vocation to which we must attend.  Nobody can spend all day in prayer, no matter what their vocation.  Priests have the needs of the parish to accomplish.  Parents have children to raise.  Everyone has the goals of their profession to meet.  And Jesus isn’t saying that any of this is wrong.

    So let’s give Martha a bit of a break. Because there is a difference between the very legitimate and laudable act that Mary was doing – listening to the Word of Jesus – and just being plain old lazy. Many of us could be tempted down those roads too, and that’s not praiseworthy. And Martha’s tasks were important ones. The demands of hospitality in the ancient world were taken very seriously. And they were difficult duties, too.  Think about all that Abraham and Sarah had to do: knead dough and make rolls, slaughter a steer and prepare it, and put together some curds and milk.  A far cry from making a run to McChesney’s and popping some steaks on the grill!  Just as Abraham leapt to his feet in our first reading to welcome the three visitors and provide them with a beautiful meal, so Martha had things to do to care for her own guest.

    But where Martha went down the wrong path was that she let the details of the tasks of hospitality overshadow the hospitality itself. In doing all the things she was doing, she had actually neglected her guest. Perhaps there was a way that she could have provided refreshment to Jesus in a way that didn’t take her outside his company for so long. Maybe a simpler meal would have sufficed. When the details of hospitality overshadow the guest, then it’s not really hospitality at all.

    I think that what’s at stake here is balance in our spiritual life. We are not called upon to make a choice between being Martha or being Mary. We are called upon to be both Martha and Mary. These scripture readings speaks of the service of the disciple, in Greek the word is diakonia, from which we derive our word, deacon. This tells us that the life of the Christian disciple is about service. What we see in today’s Gospel is that there are two aspects of that service. The first is represented by Martha’s work, and is the kind of service that takes care of what is necessary in order that God’s will would be done: it is a service that reaches out to those in need. The second kind of service is represented by Mary’s work. Her work is one of contemplation: she sits at the feet of Jesus to absorb his words and his presence.

    Both kinds of service are necessary in the life of the Christian disciple. Saint Benedict’s motto was ora et labora – work and prayer, and that’s the call we receive in today’s Liturgy.  The trick is keeping them in balance. Because it is Mary’s contemplation that gives us the spiritual refreshment necessary to reach out to those in need.  We have to be people of prayer. And it is Martha’s active service that gives meaning and context to our prayers and our preaching.  We have to be people who work. When we avoid either aspect of service, we are getting it wrong, and perhaps our Gospel today is a tug at our hearts to get it right.

    So we need to make time for both our work and our prayer. We have to give priority to contemplation and Scripture reading and whatever kind of prayer speaks to us just as much as we give priority to the demands of our vocations, whatever those vocations may be. We have to let God speak to us in our quiet and in our activity, and to remember that doing God’s will sometimes means getting quiet and sitting still long enough for him to speak to our hearts. It may take a lifetime to get this right, but as we put effort into our service of God, we too will be choosing the better part, and it will not be taken from us.

  • Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Who we are is something many of us spend a lifetime trying to figure out.  Our identity is important to us: it tells us how we fit into the social structure as well as what makes us unique from others.  Until we really know who we are, we are very unlikely to accomplish anything of importance or even be comfortable in our own skin.  And so when Jesus asks the disciples “Who do the crowds say that I am?” it is a question with which we all resonate on some level, some time in our lives.

    Now, I’m not suggesting Jesus was having an identity crisis.  Clearly, his asking that question wasn’t so much for his own information or even to see where he was in the social structure of Israel, but more for the disciples to begin thinking about what Jesus meant to them and to the world.  Jesus knows who he is and why he is here, but it’s for us and for those first disciples to begin to see Jesus in deeper ways.

    The answers the disciples give to that question are interesting.  John the Baptist risen from the dead, Elijah returned from the whirlwind, or that one of the ancient prophets had arisen.  Clearly he had no parallel on earth at the time; all their answers involved the return of someone from the dead or the beyond.  The reason this is significant is because, at the time, the possibility of there being anything beyond death or any kind of resurrection was in great dispute.  The Pharisees believed in a life after death, the Sadducees did not; that is the reason many of the Gospel stories show those two groups in opposition to each other.

    But the real significant part of their answers lies in what is going on in the disciples’ minds as they answer Jesus.  You can almost hear the excitement in their voices.  They had been seeing Jesus healing diseases and casting out demons.  Not only that, they had just returned from their own missionary journey in which Jesus gave them authority to do those same things.  Clearly they were in the presence of a superstar, and his charisma was rubbing off on them.  They were ready for the glory.

    But now Jesus wants to dig a little deeper.  “But who do you say that I am?” he asks them.  Peter speaks for the disciples and gets the answer right the first time: “The Christ of God.”  I think he answers that with deep reverence and awe, but unfortunately, he didn’t know the half of it.

    Jesus affirms his correct answer, but then goes on to reveal what that means for him.  Yes, he is the Christ of God, but the Christ isn’t what they were expecting.  This was not going to be simply some glory trip.  The Christ would have to suffer, be rejected, be killed, and then … then be raised from the dead.  And that whole being killed part is the sticking point, but it’s absolutely necessary, he can’t be raised from the dead if he isn’t killed; that’s not a step one can skip.

    When you think about it, the disciples’ early answers as to who the crowds said Jesus was had some merit.  They all spoke of someone who came back from the dead, which Jesus the Christ would indeed do.  But not just yet.

    This all had to be pretty hard for them to digest.  But it’s nothing compared to what Jesus reveals next.  Those disciples who thought they were on the glory train could also expect to suffer:

    “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
    and take up his cross daily and follow me.
    For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
    but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

    We don’t get to skip a step either.  We too will be called to the cross.  If we want eternal life, we have to be willing to give up this life.  There is no resurrection without a cross; there is no Easter Sunday without a Good Friday.  Not for Jesus and not for his disciples, not even for you and me.

    We know that suffering is part of life.  We have experienced illness, injury, pain, loss of a job, death of a loved one, physical or psychological abuse – the list is long.  So often all this suffering seems pointless.  We might even be tempted to quarrel with God: if God is loving, why to innocent people have to suffer, why do we have to suffer?  Why can’t it be the guy who cuts us off in traffic while he’s drinking coffee with one hand and talking on a cell phone in the other?

    The truth is, the justice of suffering is beyond us.  Who knows why bad things happen to good people?  Suffering can often seem so capricious, so random, so devoid of meaning.  And it is, if we let it be.  You see, sometimes we just get it wrong.  We sometimes think that Jesus came to take away suffering and we get mad when that’s not what happens.  But if Jesus came to take away suffering, he certainly wouldn’t have had to go through it himself.  He didn’t come to take away suffering, but to give meaning to it, to redeem it.

    We can see in the cross that the path to glory and the path to life leads through suffering to redemption.  There’s no way around it.  The cross Jesus took up will be ours to take up daily if we wish to follow Jesus to eternal life.  Our own identity as disciples and followers of Christ is bound up in the ugliness of suffering and the agony of the cross.

    That flies in the face of our culture that wants us to take a pill for every pain and medicate every burden.  Jesus says today that that kind of thinking is simply losing our lives trying to save them.  The rest of life passes us by while we are self-medicated beyond our pain.  But, if we lose our life for the sake of Jesus, if we take up our crosses and follow him, if we bear our burdens and our sorrows and our pain and our brokenness, if we join our sufferings to the suffering of Christ on the cross, then we too can experience what he did: the glory of eternal life.  That was the only hope of those first disciples, and it is our only hope too, fellow disciples of the Lord.

  • Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When our goal is discipleship and living for Christ, we cannot let anything get in our way.  The Israelites had put up with Athaliah and the priest of Baal and their temple long enough.  They had to wipe these enemies out and anoint a king of the Lord’s choosing, a king in the line of David, so that they could be in relationship with their God.  Athaliah and her ilk were the darkness in the eye of Israel.  What is the darkness in us?  Whatever it is, we must wipe it out ruthlessly so that we can be in relationship with our God.  God is our treasure, and there alone we find our hearts.

  • Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    One of the greatest obstacles to the Christian life is comparing ourselves to others. Because, and I’ll just say it, discipleship isn’t meant to be fair. At least not as we see fairness. The essence of discipleship is doing what we were put here to do, we ourselves. We discern that vocation by reflecting on our own gifts and talents, given to us by God, by prayerfully meditating on God’s will for us, and then engaging in conversation with the Church to see how best to use those talents and gifts. That’s the process of discernment, which is always aided by the working of the Holy Spirit.

    What causes us to get off track, though, is looking at other people and what they are doing, or the gifts they have, or the opportunities they have received. We might be envious of their gifts or the opportunities they have to use them. We may see what they are doing and think we can do it better. We might be frustrated that they don’t do what we would do if we were in their place. And all of that is nonsense. It’s pride, and it’s destructive. It will ruin the Christian life and leave us bitter people.

    That’s the correction Jesus made to Peter. Poor Peter was getting it all wrong once again. He thought Jesus was revealing secrets to John that he wanted to know also. But whatever it was that Jesus said to John as they reclined at table that night was none of Peter’s business, nor was it ours. Peter had a specific job to do, and so do we. If we are serious about our discipleship, then we would do well to take our eyes off what others are doing or saying or experiencing, and instead focus on the wonderful gifts and opportunities we have right in front of us. As for what other people are up to, as Jesus said, “what concern is that of yours?”

    As always, the Psalmist has it right. We don’t look at others, we have only one place to look: “The just will gaze on your face, O Lord.”

  • Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Jesus’ words to Peter in this Gospel reading are a mixture of comfort, challenge, and warning. Peter had just messed up in the worst way possible by denying his friend not once but three times. But then comes the question not once but three times: “Peter, do you love me?” This is comfort because with each asking, Jesus is healing Peter from the inside out.

    Then words of challenge: “Feed my sheep.” When we are forgiven or graced in any way, we, like Peter, are then challenged to do something about it. Feed my sheep, follow me, give me your life, come to know my grace in a deeper way.

    And then words of warning: “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” When we give ourselves over to God, that necessarily means that we might have to go in a direction we might not otherwise choose.

    But then Jesus brings Peter back to comfort and healing once again by saying “Follow me.” No matter what we disciples have done in our past, no matter how many times we have messed up or in what ways, there is always forgiveness if we give ourselves over to our Savior and our friend.

  • Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes we get an idea and it seems well, a little uncomfortable.  We may well have had a call or even a gentle moving from the Lord, and are afraid to act on it.  Today’s Scriptures speak to those of us who are sometimes hesitant to do what the Lord is calling on us to do.

    I think St. Paul must have been exhausted by this point in his life.  As we hear of him in our reading from Acts today, he is saved from one angry mob, only to learn he is to go to another.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  He has borne witness to Christ in Jerusalem, but now he has to go and do it all over again in Rome.  And underneath it all, he knows there is a good chance he is going to die.

    In the Gospel today, Jesus prays for all of his disciples, and also for all those who “will believe in me through their word.”  And that, of course, includes all of us.  He prays that we would be unified and would be protected from anything or anyone who might seek to divide us from each other, or even from God.  He says that we are a gift to him, and that he wishes us to be where he will be for all eternity.

    What we see in our Liturgy today is that God keeps safe the ones he loves.  If he calls us to do something, he will sustain us through it.  Maybe we’ll have to witness to Jesus all over again or we’ll have to defend our faith against people in our community or workplace – or wherever – who just don’t understand.  We might well feel hesitant at these times, but we can and must go forward, acting on God’s call.  When we do that, we can make our own prayer in the words of the Psalm today: “Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.”