It is imperative to our Spiritual lives that we learn to let go. The problem is, though, that letting go is so counterintuitive for us. We want to hold on to everything, control everything, because when we are in charge we can be sure everything will work out all right. At least we think so. The truth is that God is in control, and just like the rich young man in today’s Gospel reading, we have to learn to let go of everything that keeps us from letting God be God in our lives. That is the only way that we can achieve faith’s goal, the salvation of our souls, as the first reading tells us.
Tag: providence
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Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter
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.”
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Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Saul is proof that God’s ways are not our ways. How is it that God would pick for one of his chief Apostles a man who imprisoned and murdered the followers of the Christian Way? That had to surprise even, and perhaps especially Saul, whose life was turned completely upside-down. Poor Ananias had to be quaking in his boots to carry out this command of the Lord. But thankfully both Paul and Ananias were obedient to the Lord’s command, and we are the ones who have benefited from that. Not only has the Word of God been passed on through their faithfulness, but we see in their lives that obedience to God’s will, while it may not always make sense, is the way that true disciples live.
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Easter Friday
It is always interesting to me that the disciples, who we are told were trained fishermen, never catch anything unless they are with Jesus. Go through the Gospels and you will see that this is true. Their nets always come up empty until he gives the command to cast the nets. Then they can hardly bring in the catch because of the sheer number of fish they have caught. Today’s episode finds the disciples dejected, not sure where to go, ready to return to their former life and their former career. They have no idea what to do so they do what they always used to do … they go fishing. And it is Jesus once again who not only gives them the fish, but cooks breakfast for them. We too, are called to go fishing for the Lord in some way, but we’ll never catch anything if we go off on our own. Praise God that he is always willing to go fishing with us! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
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Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent
At the heart of our practice of prayer has to be trust in God. We don’t – or shouldn’t – need signs to convince us of God’s love and care for us. But don’t we do that all the time? Aren’t we just like those Galileans looking for a sign? We might be hesitant to take a leap of faith that we know God is calling us to make, but are looking for some kind of miracle to get us off our behinds. We might know that healing in a certain situation will take some time, but we want God to descend, wave a magic wand, and make it all go away.
But just as the royal official trusted that Jesus could cure his son, so we too need to trust that God in his goodness will work the best for us, in his time, in his way. Isaiah tells us today that God is about to create a new heavens and a new earth, where there will always be rejoicing and gladness. But how hard is it for us to wait for that new creative act, isn’t it? We just really want to see that big picture now, please, we want to know what’s on God’s mind and where he’s taking us. But that’s not how God works is it?
It can be hard for us when we look around for blessing and don’t see it happening on our timetable. We forget, sometimes, that a big part of the grace comes in the journey, even when things are really painful. The Psalmist says, “O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world; you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.” Notice how he does not say that God shielded him from going to the nether world. But the nether world was not the end of the Psalmist’s story.
We don’t know where God is taking us today – or any day, for that matter. We have to trust in our God who longs for our good, just like that royal official. And we have to believe in the power of God to raise us up, just as he raised his Son from the dead. We all long to celebrate our Easter Sundays, but our faith tells us that we have to get through our Good Fridays first.
Feel free to remind me of this homily on my next Good Friday.
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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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Tuesday of the Twenty-first Week of Ordinary Time
How wonderful it is to be known by God. Today the Psalmist prays, “O LORD, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar.” Being known by God implies also being cared for by God. Why would God busy himself about our business if he did not care for us? Being known by God also means we can be ourselves from him. We need not hide anything, indeed, we cannot hide anything. This doesn’t mean we need not grow, and change, and repent as necessary. But it does mean that God meets us where we are and intends to take us with him to glory. As the Psalmist also says today, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain.” The good news is that we need not attain it ourselves. This God who knows us and cares for us, is the one that helps us to do everything.
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Friday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time
“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.
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Our Lady of Fatima
Today’s readings: Isaiah 66:10-14, Psalm 131:1-3, John 2:1-11
Between May 13 and October 13, 1917, three Portuguese children received apparitions of Our Lady at Cova da Iria, near Fatima, a city 110 miles north of Lisbon. Mary asked the children to pray the rosary for world peace, for the end of World War I, for sinners and for the conversion of Russia. The local bishop approved the feast of Our Lady of Fatima in 1930, and it was added to the Church’s worldwide calendar in 2002.
Because we do not yet have prayers for the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, I am using prayers and readings for the Mass of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Divine Providence. The Blessed Virgin, the Church tells us, is called “mother of divine providence” because she has been given to us by God in his great providence as a generous mother providing us through her intercession with gifts from heaven.
If not for Mary’s intercession in today’s Gospel, the wedding feast at Cana wouldn’t have been so wonderful. But more important than that, she used this opportunity to help others come to believe in Jesus, his power, and his love for the world. She continues to do that not only through revelations like those at Fatima, but also in the hearts of all of us when we pray to her.
Mary is the one who leads us and points us to the providence and loving kindness of our God, just as she helped people to see the light during that bleak period at the end of World War I. She continues to shed light on the dark parts of our lives and our world and our communities in our own day. Well did she advise those children to pray the rosary for world peace then, and so maybe, just maybe, it would be good for us to do the same thing today.
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Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
I think sometimes we really need to know that we are in the hands of God. Things here on earth can be pretty uncertain on a daily basis. The state of the economy, wars being fought all over the globe, the disrespect for human life, antagonism toward Christ-like values, all of this makes us feel pretty uncertain, at best. Add to that the stuff that affects us directly: illness, death of a loved one, unemployment, family difficulties, our own sins – all of this may find us asking the question from time to time, “Where is God in all this?”
That’s why it’s so good to hear Jesus say today:
My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.This does not, of course, mean that life is going to be easier for us, or that we won’t still be challenged in this world. But it does give us confidence that we are on the right track, and that our ways are being guarded. With this confidence, we are expected then to be disciples. We are expected to go forth and do what God asks of us, ministering to those in need, reaching out to the broken, preaching the Good News just by the way that we live our life.
We can live and preach the Gospel with confidence, we can be called Christians as our brothers and sisters in the first reading were for the first time, knowing that God has our back. Whatever we may suffer in this life for the sake of Christ will more than be rewarded in the life to come. And the good works we do here on earth, as small as they may seem to us in the face of such adversity, are never for nothing: God takes our efforts and makes them huge advances in the battle for souls.
Jesus says that the Father is greater than all, and that all of us, safe in the Father’s hands, can never be taken from him. Praise God for his providence and mercy and protection today.
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