So they drag Saint Stephen before the Sanhedrin, and make all sorts of false claims against him. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In fact, Stephen is in good company. He is brought to the same place where his Lord Jesus, and later Peter and the apostles, have gone before him. And just like all of them, even with all the lies and accusations flying around him, he is at peace. The source of his peace, is of course, his Lord who has gone before him, that same Lord who now fills him, as the first line of the reading says, with “grace and power.” We too, will be tested in this life because of our faith. We too, can rely on that same grace and power if we unite ourselves to our Risen Lord.
Tag: grace
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Wednesday of Holy Week
“The Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of him…” The gospels tell us in many places that Jesus willingly laid down his life. This was the mission the Father gave him, and this was the mission he had taken up on this earth. In these final days of Holy Week, Jesus lives up to the mission he has freely taken up. Isaiah says of him: “And I have not rebelled, have not turned back. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; My face I did not shield from buffets and spitting.” There would have been precious little grace had it happened any other way. “For your sake I bear insult,” the Psalmist says, “and shame covers my face.” In what way are we being called to willingly take up our cross today?
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Lent Penance Service
Today’s Gospel: John 3:14-21
The only thing God wants to do is to forgive sinners. Period. That’s what our Gospel reading tells us very plainly today: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” And so, in Jesus Christ, we have absolutely everything that we need for the forgiveness of sins, except one thing. In Jesus Christ, we have our God who became man. We have in Christ the Saving Sacrifice, his life poured out on us to take away the penalty of our sins and nullify the sting of our death. Not only that, but Jesus Christ strengthens us with the gift of his Holy Spirit, who enlivens in us the desire to be close to our God and to put our sins behind us. That Holy Spirit gives us the grace not just to know and confess our sins, but also the grace to avoid the sin ahead of us. In Christ, the way to forgiveness is open. We have all we need – except one thing.
And that one thing is the thing that must come from within us, namely, repentance. Because once we repent of our sins, turn away from them, and confess them, we can then accept God’s grace and mercy, and become a new people, marked by faith hope and love. But repentance is a choice that’s up to us; it’s a habit we have to develop, because it’s not a habit that we see demonstrated much in our world. Our world would rather take mistakes and put a positive “spin” on them so everyone saves face. But that’s not repentance. Our world would rather find someone else to blame for the problems we encounter, so that we can be righteously indignant and accept our own status as victims. But that’s not repentance. Our world would rather encounter an issue by throwing at it money, human resources, military intervention, lawsuits or legislation. But that’s not repentance.
The problem, as our Gospel tells us this evening, is that the world prefers the darkness of sin and ignorance and death over the glorious light of God’s grace and forgiveness, and mercy. It’s insanity, but that’s the sad truth of our world.
So, quite frankly, if we are ever going to learn the habit of repentance, we are going to have to look elsewhere than the evening news. World leaders are no help at all, and even if the media were to see an example of repentance, I’m not sure they’d give it much play. So where are we going to get the inspiration to live as a repentant people? These Lenten days, we might look at the wayward son’s interaction with the Prodigal Father, or perhaps the woman at the well who left her jug behind to live the new life. We might look at the woman caught in adultery or even at the “good thief” crucified with Jesus. All of these got the idea and turned from their sin toward their God and received life in return. This is the habit of repentance that we have been called to develop in ourselves.
Brothers and sisters, sin enslaves us and makes exiles out of us. Sin takes us out of the community and puts us off on our own, in a very empty place. That exile might look something like this:
- We ignore the needs of the poor and exile ourselves from the full community;
- We judge others and thus draw a dividing line between ourselves and those we judge;
- We lie and are no longer trusted by others;
- We refuse to forgive, and are trapped in the past, not willing to respond to the present;
- We cheat, steal and abuse the rights of others and thus offend the right order of the community;
- We act violently in words and actions and thus perpetuate forces that splinter and violate the human community;
- We withdraw from their church and diminish the community’s ability to witness to God and serve others.
The exile of sin is heartbreaking, but it doesn’t have to be that way for us. The Liturgy of the Word throughout the Lenten season has been showing us the way back. We have the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit to inspire us with desire for communion with our God. We have the grace and mercy poured out on us through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we have the grace to do that one thing that’s missing; to develop that habit that makes us one with our God – that habit of repentance that brings us back no matter how far we have wandered or how many times we have turned away. Our God can still reach us in exile and he can still bring us back to the community, if we will but let him. The only thing our God wants to do is to forgive sinners. Not just once, not twice, but as many times as we fall and as often as we turn away – so long as we repent and turn back to him.
And that’s why we’re here tonight. God is aching to pour out on us the grace of his forgiveness and to bring us to his peace beyond all of our understanding, and we have chosen to come and receive it. We have chosen to be a people marked by faith, hope and love. We long to develop that habit of repentance which allows us to receive the new life God has always wanted for us. The only thing God wants to do is to forgive sinners. So let us now as a community of faith examine our conscience and repent of our sins.
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Friday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings
Personal integrity is the thing that can bring down the best of us. The easiest thing for us to do is to live one life, and that life would be the life that God gives us. God’s grace is buried when we try to live another life entirely. David’s momentary lust gave way to a double life that included adultery and murder, which forever sullied the greatness that God wanted for him. Sin complicates things in unbelievable ways. Grace gives us the opportunity to live simply and to live fully.
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Thursday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings
Today we hear about the amazing power of spiritual friendship. If it were not for Jonathan, Saul would have murdered David not just in the story we heard today, but many times. The Lord’s rejection of Saul was driving him to madness, and, as many insecure people do, he was doing everything possible to sabotage the one who was making him look bad. But Jonathan’s intervention changed things, and David lived to become a great king.
But I’m not just extolling friendship alone here. Make no mistake; friendship is a good thing. But I said this reading was about the amazing power of spiritual friendship. Spiritual friendship has its basis in God’s grace, and is definitely a gift from God. A spiritual friendship is a kind of companionship in which the companions, in their affection for one another, lead each other to God. Jonathan and David did that in many ways, and the fruit of that was that Jonathan protected David’s vocation to be king. Spiritual friends always bring out the best in each other; they help each other become what God created them to be.
Today, pause and be grateful for those who have been spiritual friends to you. Think of those who have helped you become what God created you to be; those whose encouragement has brought you closer to God. May God bless those who have been a blessing to us.
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Wednesday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time
If David had advanced against the Philistine with the finest weapons and the most advanced armor possible, the story we have in our first reading would just be nice. But instead of relying on all kinds of technology to take down the giant, he relied on something more certain than technology and way bigger than the giant: he relied on the power of God’s grace. And that, my friends, makes for a darn good story! So what huge, giant thing are you facing these days? Have you been relying on yourself and on everything but God to slay it? If so, it’s not going to happen. But relying on God for the grace we need in every situation is the technology that has power to not just change our situation, but even to change us. And that’s a story worth telling!
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Friday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time
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!
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Memorial of 9-11-01
Today’s readings
I think many of us will never forget where we were eight years ago today. People say that about the day that President Kennedy died, or the day when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. But in a particular way, I think we will never forget September 11, 2001, because it was a day that changed our world in some very unpleasant ways and shattered whatever remained of our innocence. Traveling and doing business has changed so much in these years. So many of us have known people who have died in the twin towers, or in the war that has raged since.
I remember the weekend following that horrible day. I came home from seminary to visit with my parents, and we came here to church to pray. The church was packed, on a Friday night. And I know that in every church in America, pews were full every day and every weekend for quite a while. Look around now, though. Where is everyone? Now that the world isn’t going to end as fast as we thought, do we no longer need God? Or have we grown weary of the war that has been fought since and the changes in our world and just given up on God?
I think that as the war continues, and the lack of peace seems to continue, and the somewhat subdued, now, but ever-present sense of terror continues, it might just be time for us to do some examination and to discern what has led to that sense of unrest. Today’s Gospel gives us the examination of conscience that will help us to do that. What precisely is the plank of wood in our own eyes that needs to be removed before we can concentrate on the splinter in the eye of another? What is it that is un-peaceful in us that contributes, in some small but nonetheless very real measure to the lack of peace in the world?
We all have to do that on an individual basis to start with. St. Paul does it in our first reading today when he admits to his friend Timothy, “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man…” And he acknowledges with deep gratitude and profound humility how God changed his life, had mercy on him, forgave him his sins, and gave him charge over one of the most significant evangelical and missionary ministries in the history of the world. We, too, are blasphemers, persecutors and arrogant men and women, and it is time for us to humbly acknowledge that and urgently beg from God the grace to turn it around, that all the world might be turned around with us.
But we also have to do this on a communal basis as well. We don’t go to salvation alone; that’s why we Catholics don’t get overly excited about having a personal relationship with Jesus. For us, a personal relationship with Christ, is like that first baby step; once we’re there, we know that we cannot rest and admire our work. A personal relationship with Christ is certainly a good start for us, but we know that we have to be faithful in community or nothing truly great can ever happen. So it’s up to all of us together to work for true peace, figuring out what in our society has led to unrest and mercilessly casting it out, opening ourselves to the peacemaking power of God that can transform the whole world. Together, as the Mass for the Feast of Christ the King will tell us, we must work with Christ to present to God “a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.”
I get a little worked up when I think about this kind of thing, because I’ve come to realize this is the only way it’s all going to get wrapped up rightly. Only when all the world has come to know the saving power of our God will we experience the return to grace that we lost in the Garden of Eden. And that will never happen until all peoples have learned to love and respect one another, and have come to be open to the true peace that only God can give us.
It didn’t all go wrong on 9-11; if we are honest, that horrifying day was a long time coming. But that day should have been a loud, blaring wake-up call to all of us that things have to change if we are ever going to experience the peace of Christ’s kingdom. We are not going to get there without any one person or even any group of people; we need for all of us to repent if any of us will ever see that great day. Today, brothers and sisters in Christ, absolutely must be a time when we all hear that wakeup call yet anew, and respond to it from the depths of our hearts, both as individuals, and as a society.
Truly we will never forget where we were on that horrible day of 9-11. But wouldn’t it be great if we could all one day look back with fondness, remembering with great joy the day when we finally partnered with our God and turned it all around?
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Wednesday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time
We spend a lot of time, too much time really, looking at other people and what is going on with them. We can be so worried that others will end up with something better than what we have, that we may very well miss the great blessings that are set out for us. None of those migrant workers were cheated, indeed the landowner was fair to all of them. But he went beyond fair; he also recognized the plight of the poor. In case you missed it, that is the Gospel, brothers and sisters in Christ. He decided to give more than he had to to those who might have otherwise gone without anything. He recognized his duty to the poor, and we would all do well to follow his example, because that’s what Christ expects of us. We are also expected to be thankful people. If we have worked all day by the sweat of our brow to earn what we have, then we should be grateful for the grace of honest work. If we received a gift we could never earn, then we should be grateful for the grace freely given. But we must never sully it by looking at what others have received, lest we miss noticing the graces we have received and miss the opportunity to be thankful.
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Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time
I want to feel bad for Lot’s wife in today’s first reading. Not only is she not even called by name in the entire reading, but she gets turned into a pillar of salt just for a backward glance. But, sad as it is, this is the whole point of the reading, and it’s not like they weren’t warned – the angel was very clear: “Flee for your life! Don’t look back or stop anywhere on the Plain. Get off to the hills at once, or you will be swept away.” So in some ways, she deserved what she got. But I think the reading is getting at something a little deeper here than a mere glance over one’s shoulder.
Indeed the real issue is, what did that looking back mean? Sodom and Gomorrah were being destroyed for their wanton evil. They may have once been wonderful cities, but they had become centers of every kind of evil and debased action. And this evil was so pervasive that no other corrective action other than total destruction of the cities would do. If yesterday had not been the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, we would have heard the famous reading about Abraham and God bargaining to save those cities. At the end of it all, God agrees at Abraham’s urging not to destroy the place if just ten righteous people could be found there. Obviously the righteous numbered less than ten, amounting to just Lot, his wife, and his two daughters.
But, so pervasive was the evil of that place, that it infected even Lot’s wife, who didn’t just glance back to see if she dropped something. No, the backward glance was more likely sorrow for what she left behind; she was not untainted by the scandal of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The lesson is that when God leads us forward, we cannot debase ourselves to look back. The Psalmist has it right today, as always, when he says, “For your mercy is before my eyes, and I walk in your truth.” Your mercy is before my eyes, so I need to look forward, not back. Looking backward leads us to our old sinful ways; looking forward is what leads us to our God. So if God is giving us the chance to move forward, as he did for Lot and his wife and his daughters, then we can do no less than fix our eyes on the path ahead, cutting our ties with everything that is behind us.
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