Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: integrity

  • Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees in the Gospel reading, and it’s important to understand that he was not giving them marriage counseling, because that’s not what they asked for. They seemed to be asking a question about divorce and whether or not it should be allowed, but what they were really trying to do was to get him to say something against Moses and thus prove himself to be a charlatan. But he doesn’t play their game, and instead reminded them of Moses’ own words regarding the permanence of the marriage bond. They wanted to use a loophole in Moses’ teaching to get him tripped up, but instead he trips them up by reminding them of what Moses really taught. The Christian disciple doesn’t need loopholes: she or he lives the Gospel with integrity.

    The wisdom writer of the Book of Sirach says something similar today about the faithful friend. The faithful friend is indeed a rich treasure who can be trusted in good times and bad. I remember my experience as a chaplain in the emergency room of a big hospital when I was in seminary. The staff were justifiably aloof from me at first. But when I helped them console a family in a very difficult situation, they realized I could be counted on and then we became friends. Sometimes friends prove themselves in adversity, and by living the Gospel with integrity.

    All of this leads us into Lent next week quite nicely, I think. We are called to turn up the fire on our discipleship, to live with integrity, and to be there for others in good times and in bad.

  • Friday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It’s been interesting to me this week about how the letter of James has served to underscore Jesus’ teachings from the Gospel of Mark.  On weekends, the first reading and Gospel are selected to go together, but during the week that’s not always the case.  But this week, James and Mark have been boldly proclaiming some needed virtues in the Christian disciple.  Today’s virtue seems to be one of integrity.

    I say integrity because both passages are strongly cautioning all of us to make the right decision and then live accordingly, persevering with our conscience.  James tells us to stop complaining about one another so as to avoid judgment, and then to persevere as the ancient prophets did.  Finally, we are to avoid swearing under oath, instead letting our “yes” or “no” mean exactly what they sound like, and not to say one thing and do another.

    Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees in the Gospel reading, and it’s important to understand that he was not giving them marriage counseling, because that’s not what they asked for.  They seemed to be asking a question about divorce and whether or not it should be allowed, but what they were really trying to do was to get him to say something against Moses and thus prove himself to be a charlatan.  But he doesn’t play their game, and instead reminded them of Moses’ own words regarding the permanence of the marriage bond.  They wanted to use a loophole in Moses’ teaching to get him tripped up, but instead he trips them up by reminding them of what Moses really taught. 

    The Christian disciple doesn’t need loopholes: she or he lives the Gospel in integrity. Let your “Yes” mean “Yes” and your “No” mean “No.”

  • Friday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The saga between Saul and David continues. The Lord has rejected Saul, and given gifts and charisms to David, who God intends to anoint as king in Saul’s stead. This is obvious to Saul, and has driven him to madness. He is so enraged at this point that he mounts a large military campaign – three thousand of Israel’s best men – just to hunt down David. Insecure people do crazy things.

    But, although he certainly could, and even though God said “Do with him as you see fit,” David will do no such thing. He recognizes that even though the king might be flawed – crazy, even – he is still the king, and action against the king is action against God as well.

    This, friends, is the essence of the fourth of the Ten Commandments: respecting authority. People of integrity do not take advantage of others, or mount campaigns against them. Instead, they continue to do their work and live their calling as God has required of them. Remember that the Fourth Commandment is the only one that comes with a promise: “that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” (Exodus 20:12)

    God is faithful. It is up to disciples to be people of integrity and be faithful as well.

  • The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Cycle B)

    The Fifth Sunday of Lent (Cycle B)

    Today’s readings

    “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

    Bill had worked for the company for twenty-seven years, and he loved his job: it was energizing, he worked with great people, he worked for great people. It was a family business, and they treated the people who worked for them like family. They were paid well, had good benefits, and they all worked hard – it was an ideal situation. But, over the years, the brothers who ran the company retired, and sold the company to another in the same business. They were taken over a few years ago by still another company, so it was hard sometimes to remember who they even worked for. It wasn’t family any more –profits were most important, and the quality of work and product wasn’t so important as was the next big presentation for the stockholders. Everyone was trying to get ahead, and they were cutting corners to do it.

    Eventually he became aware that something was really off. What they were billing their biggest clients for, and what they were providing, were two different things. He’d seen the invoices and the sales orders and they didn’t match. And these were government contracts. He checked and re-checked, and there was no getting around it, the disparity was clear. As time went on, he knew he couldn’t live with what was going on. But if he blew the whistle, who was going to have his back? He had a family and needed the job and its benefits. But his faith had informed his conscience and he knew he couldn’t just look the other way.

    His hour had come.

    Many of us have to face our own “hours.” A teenager says his friends are constantly getting drunk and he does not want to join them. As a result he loses those friends. A parent objects to athletic practices for her children on Sunday morning. As a result, her child does not make the team. Our hour comes whenever our identity is on the line, when we are called on to make sacrifice, when we must make a decision that will cost us. The “hour” often puts our choices at odds with others and we must decide if we will live out and, in a way, die for what we believe.

    And so, maybe we can relate a bit to Jesus today. His hour had come, the hour for him to be glorified, sure, but it was also an hour that would lead first to his death. He knew this very well. In John’s Gospel, none of this is a surprise for Jesus – he is not dragged to the cross, there is no Garden of Gethsemane moment where he begs for the cup to be taken from him. Instead, John’s Gospel has Jesus in full control. He knows why he came, he knows that the hour is at hand, and he freely lays down his life for all of us.

    We are in the “homestretch” of Lent right now. Maybe this would be a good time to look back on our own “hours” and see how we’ve handled them. Have we stood for what we believe and died a little in the process? Or have we given in to the world and gone with the flow and lost our faith in the process? Chances are we are all somewhere on that journey, and now is a good time for us to return if we’ve gotten off track. Go to confession, maybe during our mission this week, and make plans to live our faith anew. It would be great if we could enter into the glory of Easter, knowing that we have made decisions that make our lives new.

    The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. We know how he responded and what he gave for us. What are we willing to give for him?

  • Friday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It’s been interesting to me this week about how the letter of James has served to underscore Jesus’ teachings from the Gospel of Mark.  On weekends, the first reading and Gospel are selected to go together, but during the week that’s not always the case.  But this week, James and Mark have been boldly proclaiming some needed virtues in the Christian disciple.  Today’s virtue seems to be one of integrity.

    I say integrity because both passages are strongly cautioning all of us to make the right decision and then live accordingly, persevering with our conscience.  James tells us to stop complaining about one another so as to avoid judgment, and then to persevere as the ancient prophets did.  Finally, we are to avoid swearing under oath, instead letting our “yes” or “no” mean exactly what they sound like, and not to say one thing and do another.

    Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees in the Gospel reading, and it’s important to understand that he was not giving them marriage counseling, because that’s not what they asked for.  They seemed to be asking a question about divorce and whether or not it should be allowed, but what they were really trying to do was to get him to say something against Moses and thus prove himself to be a charlatan.  But he doesn’t play their game, and instead reminded them of Moses’ own words regarding the permanence of the marriage bond.  They wanted to use a loophole in Moses’ teaching to get him tripped up, but instead he trips them up by reminding them of what Moses really taught.  The Christian disciple doesn’t need loopholes: she or he lives the Gospel in integrity.

  • Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Susanna’s story is one of the most eloquent in the Old Testament Scriptures, in it we see the wisdom of the prophet Daniel, as well as the mercy and justice of God.  I think when we hear it, we can’t but help think of yesterday’s Gospel reading about the acquittal of the woman caught in adultery, although Susanna was actually innocent.  In that Gospel reading, we are treated to the wisdom of Jesus, brought about as it is with the mercy and justice of God.  But sadly, we see in both stories also the fickleness of the human heart and the evil and treachery that makes up some of our darker moments.

    To those who seek to pervert justice and to collude with others against some other person, these readings expose those evil thoughts and flood the darkness with the piercing light of God’s justice.  No one has a right to judge others when their own intentions are not pure.  Only God can give real justice, just as only God brings ultimate mercy.

    To those who are the victims of oppression, these readings give hope that God in his mercy will always hear the cry of the poor and give to the downtrodden the salvation which they seek.  God is ultimately very interested in the kind of justice that is characterized by right relationships with one another and with Him.  It is the desire of God’s heart that this kind of justice would be tempered with mercy and would go out and lighten all the dark places of the earth.

    Today we are called upon to right wrongs, to be completely honest and forthright in our dealings with others, to seek to purify our hearts of any wicked intent, and most of all to seek to restore right relationships with any person who has something against us, or against whom we have something.  Our prayer this day is that God’s mercy and justice would reign, and that God’s kingdom would come about in all its fullness.

  • Men’s Ministry Lenten Breakfast Talk: How Do Men Observe Lent?

    Men’s Ministry Lenten Breakfast Talk: How Do Men Observe Lent?

    Last night, I was in church for the Living Stations.  The junior high kids were leading it and they did an awesome job.  They even got me to shed a few tears along the way.  I’m half Italian: we just do that!  But what was it that got to me and caused those tears:

    1. 1. That the kids took it seriously and were very reverent and prayerful?
    2. 2. Was it the story of salvation, in awe and wonder that God would send his Son to die that horrible death for me?
    3. 3. Or was it that I was hoping and praying those kids are being touched by the meaning of what they were doing?

    And the answer is yes, all of that:  As the father of this big family, my heart is moved in all of those ways and more.  That’s what fathers do.  And so I’ve been reflecting on Lent and what that means for men.  How is it that we men observe Lent?

    Maybe I should ask, how is it that we men should observe Lent?  Because I know that we live busy lives, and we can scarcely give Lent a second thought if we’re not careful.  But that does nobody any good: not us, not our families, not our communities or workplaces.  If we want to be the best we can for all of them, we have to let Lent permeate who we are and what we do.

    And it’s a quandary with which I’m familiar.  When I worked in my pre-seminary days, if I didn’t put prayer on my to-do list – literally – there would be no prayer.  And when there was no prayer, I was not at my best at work, I was not at my best with anyone.  Lent gives us the opportunity to take stock of this and turn it all around.

    Reading: Isaiah 64:4-7

    I probably don’t have to pound home that point from Isaiah: we have become like unclean men.  The opportunities to go wrong abound, don’t they?  We intend to be men of integrity, but business is complicated.  We intend to love our families into heaven, but we’re tired, we’re busy, and we just don’t always have the patience.  Our sins abound, and we don’t intend that – we so wish we could turn back to God once and for all.  Would that he might meet us doing right.  Maybe that can happen this Lent.

    Here’s a question to think about – we will discuss it later, but for now, just think:  have you ever had a really significant Lent: a time when you felt a new springtime in your faith, a time when you grew as a man and really came to know the plans God had for you?  If so, when was that, and what was it that got to you?

    (Pause a minute or two.)

    I think Lent encourages at least five manly traits, and I want to reflect on those a bit.  Then I want to take a look at the three habits that Lent demands of us.  Finally, without stomping too much on Dr. Muir’s presentation coming up, I want to take a brief look at three men of Lent and reflect on what they model for us.

    So first: five manly traits that Lent encourages.

    First, Lent encourages us to be men of prayer.  Yes, men of prayer are men who pray, but not just men who say prayers.  Men of prayer are men who:

    • • pray first and often
    • • look around them and see God’s hand at work
    • • are grateful for their gifts
    • • look for an opportunity to worship
    • • experience the sacraments
    • • teach their families how to pray, how to have a relationship with Jesus
      • o We never go alone to the kingdom … we are supposed to take everyone with us, especially our families!

    Second, Lent encourages us to be men of faith.  Men of faith know that God is with them in good times and bad.  Men of faith have that relationship with Jesus that helps them to relate well with others.  Men of faith are courageous, and tenacious, and confident, but they are never arrogant.  Humility marks men of faith because they know the source of their strength.  This is not a false humility that makes them doormats for everyone who wishes to take them on.

    Third, Lent encourages us to be men of charity.  This might not mean what you think it does.  It’s not primarily about giving money to the poor, or even doing good things for other people.  Yes, these are acts of charity, but what I mean by being men of charity takes us to the Latin root of the word, caritas.  Caritas is a kind of self-giving love, a love that looks for the good of others, a love that sometimes finds its expression in works of charity, but is always characterized by putting the other one first.  Men of charity are men who have a strong, burning love for God that translates into the way they love their families, spouses, children, co-workers, employees, everyone God puts in their path.  Men who exhibit this charity certainly do not overlook another’s faults, but gently and firmly corrects them because he knows that setting the person right is what is best for them.  Charity sometimes means saying no, or not yet; it means saying do this even though you don’t think you want to.  Think how often God does that to us!

    • • Example from my life: my parents urging me to go on a retreat or be part of a group.

    Fourth, Lent encourages us to be men of integrity.  Men of integrity exhibit what we generally refer to as “character.”  These are men who do the right thing even though someone isn’t breathing down their neck or micromanaging them.  Integrity is what we all want to say that we have.  But integrity is definitely difficult to always achieve.  Because integrity means walking away from a lucrative business deal because it doesn’t feel right.  Integrity means setting priorities for yourself and your family that are probably counter-cultural, like saying no to sports or activities that make it impossible to go to Mass or to spend adequate time with our families.  Integrity means we are as good as our word, that we can always be relied on to do the right thing.  God does not want to be a micromanager: he wants to set us on the right path and have us walk it every day.  Men of integrity do that.

    Finally, Lent calls us to be men of grace.  This doesn’t mean we are able to burn up the dance floor, it means rather that we are aware of God’s action in our life, that we live by that action, and that we spread it on to others.  Grace says that everything we have is a gift, no matter how hard we think we’ve worked for it.  Grace says that we are sinners, men who have committed sins and are guilty of every possible offense against God, but even so we are loved and forgiven and called and blessed.  Grace says that God is infinitely greater than our sins, that there is no way that we can fall so far that God can’t reach us, that he longs to pull us up out of the waters of death and give us life that lasts forever.

    The truth of grace is this:  on one day in time, let’s call it December 25, of the year zero… (footnote Fr. Larry Hennessy).

    Men of grace are aware of their sinfulness and bring it to the Sacrament of Penance on a regular basis; they are grateful for the gift of forgiveness and celebrate it at the table of the Eucharist.  Men of grace enthusiastically pass the faith on to their families, keenly aware of their vocational responsibility to help their spouse and their children get to heaven.  Men of grace witness to others by being men of prayer, men of faith, men of charity and men of integrity!

    Another question to think about – of the five manly traits, which do you find most present in your life?  What do you think got you there?  Which do you find least present in your life?  What do you need to do to pursue it?

    So now, three Lenten habits: fasting, almsgiving and prayer.

    Fasting helps us to:

    • • give up what we truly do not need
    • • let go of things that keep us tethered to the world, to our own self-interest
    • • find in our hunger that there is nothing we hunger for that God can’t provide.

    Almsgiving helps us to:

    • • realize that we are not the center of the universe, and also we are not alone
    • • see other people as God sees them and love them as God does.

    Prayer helps us to:

    • • find God in the midst of our business, brokenness, despair
    • • have a relationship with God that sees us through good times and bad
    • o Joke about the guy who was going through a hard time and looked at the Bible randomly for some help
    • • see God’s work in our lives

    A question to think about:  What’s your Lenten plan?  How will you implement fasting, almsgiving and prayer in your life?

    Men of Lent

    Peter: Matthew 14:22-33

    • o A man of fledgling faith
      • ♣ courageous, tenacious
    • o A man of grace
      • ♣ fallen and forgiven

    Paul:  Philippians 1:19-26

    • o A man of converted faith (his past)
    • o A man of grace (knows who is in charge, where he is being led)
    • o A man of charity (is concerned about others, and fruitful labor)

    A question to think about:  Which of these men inspires you most?  Why?  What can you take from his life to create a powerful life-changing Lent?

  • The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    Today’s readings

    I think today’s Gospel reading has some intriguing images for us.  Salt and light are basic things, but they certainly are things with which we can relate, things we experience on a daily basis.  Salt and light are things that have an effect on everything around them.  Add a little salt to some soup and you bring out the flavor.  Turn on a light and you don’t fall down the stairs.  So if we are salt and light, then we must have an effect on the world around us as well.

    I like to cook, and so the reference to seasoning is one that gets my imagination going.  You have to have some salt in food that you’re cooking or the meal will be bland and lifeless.  We’ve all had under-seasoned food, and when we did we probably felt underwhelmed.  We knew there was something missing.  Now I can’t imagine salt losing its saltiness.  In fact, I googled this and there was a science-type person taking this question on and he indicated that salt, in its crystalline form, is pretty stable; it doesn’t lose its flavor.  So Jesus was using, as he often does, hyperbole to get our attention.  Suppose for the moment that salt could lose its saltiness: what would it then be good for?  Nothing, of course.

    Jesus seems to be insinuating that we, as the salt for the world, could lose our saltiness.  We could become under-seasoned by skipping Mass to attend a sports event or sleep in.  We could become under-seasoned by neglecting our prayer life.  We could become under-seasoned by watching the wrong things on TV or surfing the wrong sites on the internet.  We could become under-seasoned by holding on to relationships that are sinful.  And when that starts to happen, our ability to season our world with the presence of Christ is diminished bit by bit.

    When I talk to second-graders about sin, in preparation for their first confession, I often use the image of light and darkness.  Again, I do that because it’s an image they can grasp.  I ask them how many of them are or at least were afraid of the dark.  I think we all are or were to some extent afraid of the dark.  Even now, when you hear a noise in the middle of the night, don’t you find it just a little more frightening because it’s dark?  There is good reason to be afraid of the dark: you could fall or trip over something, some danger or person could be hiding waiting to leap out at you.  I could go on, but I don’t want you calling me in the middle of the night if you can’t sleep!

    And so, I ask my second-grade friends, what do you do to make the dark a less scary thing?  And the answer is, of course, that you turn on a light.  The light changes everything: you can see the obstacles over which you might have fallen.  Anything lurking in the dark will now be identified in the light.  Sometimes a quick look around with the lights on will assure you that that noise you heard was just the house settling, or the furnace firing up, or something similarly innocuous.  The light just makes you feel a little safer.

    And so we are called to be light too.  We don’t need much time to think about how dark our world can be at times.  We see on television the news about war and crime and terrorism and new diseases and things we shouldn’t be eating.  We hear about children bullying one another and people stalking others on the internet.  A quick moment of reflection reminds us of our own sinfulness; the bad that we have done and the good we have failed to do.  Darkness in our world can be pretty pervasive at times, and it makes the world a rather frightening place.

    But we have the light.  We’ve been exposed to the light.  We have come alive in Jesus, the Light of the world.  We just finished celebrating Christmas and Epiphany in which Jesus came to our dark world to be made manifest, to walk among us and lead us on our pilgrim way to heaven.  On Wednesday, if you were one of the five or so people brave enough to forge your way through the blizzard and join Father Raj for Mass at 7:00, you celebrated Candlemas – the Presentation of the Lord, the closing epiphany that propelled the infant Jesus into his ministry in the world.  We have the light, shining in the very dark place that is our world.

    As those gifted with the Light of the world, we become people of light.  We become light for the world too.  Jesus insists that our light should shine so brightly that we affect the darkness of our world, completely overcoming that darkness with the Light of Christ.  He insists that we are now that city, set on a hill, that cannot be hidden.  And we know how true that is.

    We may know the truth of that in rather negative ways in these past years.  Our Church has been the city set on a hill affected by scandal, first in the United States, then into Europe and other places.  People saw what happened, it was set on a hill and could not be hidden.  We have been ashamed and grieving in the years since.

    And that’s what Satan wants for our Church.  He wants to see us set on a hill and ashamed.  He wants us to be seen by the watching world doing nothing, because we have lost our way.  But that’s not what God wants.  He still calls us to be the light for the world.  People do see us, and have to see us doing good in big ways and small ways, so that other people will see the way to God and take delight in the ways we have seasoned the world.

    I have a very small example.  I was cooking the other day, and realized I’d forgotten just three things that I needed.  So I went to Jewel at 4:30 on Friday afternoon.  I quickly found what I was looking for and headed to check out.  The lines, of course, were a little long at that time on Friday night.  But the man ahead of me, noticing I had just three items, invited me to go in front of him.  The man in front of him did the same, and soon I was at the head of the line.  I thanked them, and as I headed out to the car, I wondered if I would have done the same thing.  I’d like to think I would have, but I don’t know.  What I did do was to say a prayer for them, which I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have thought to do had they not shown kindness to me.  And heaven only knows the good that prayer may have done for them and those around them.

    St. Therese of Liseaux used to talk about doing little things with great love for the glory of God.  She found joy in her “Little Way” and it has inspired so many people ever since.  Our Liturgy today calls us to do little things and big things, all for God’s glory.  It calls us to be salt for a world grown bland with despair and light for a world dwelling in a very dark place.  In our first reading, the prophet Isaiah tells us how to do it:

    Share your bread with the hungry,
    shelter the oppressed and the homeless;
    clothe the naked when you see them,
    and do not turn your back on your own.
    Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…

    If neglecting our prayer life and our integrity causes us to lose our saltiness, if giving in to shame and despair puts out our light, then we can never do what we were created for.  But we have been given salt and light to season and light our world.  We are the city set on the hill for all the watching world to see.  Would that they might see us doing little things and big things, all for the glory of God.

  • Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Our first reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians this morning could well have been written to all of us today, couldn’t it?  He speaks of a crooked and perverse generation, and all we have to do is watch the news to see examples of that in our own day and age.  And so his challenge to them is one that we should take on as well – to “shine like lights in the world,” holding on to the word of life.  We do this by being people of prayer, people of service, people of witness, and above all, people of integrity.  In what way is God calling you to shine like a light in this dark world?

  • Friday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    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.