Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: providence

  • Thursday of the First Week of Lent

    Thursday of the First Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Have you noticed that the readings for these early days of Lent have been teaching us how to accomplish the various disciplines of Lent, which really are the various disciplines of the spiritual life? Today’s discipline then, I think, would be persistence in prayer. In the first reading, we have Queen Esther, who is really between a rock and a hard place. The king does not know she is Hebrew, and worse than that, if she goes to the king without being summoned, she could well lose her life. But, Mordecai, the man who was her guardian and raised her as his own daughter, revealed to her that the king’s advisor had planned genocide against the Jews, and she was the only person in a position to beg the king to change his mind. So today, she prays that her life, as well as those of her people would be spared. Esther prayed for three days and nights that her prayer would be answered, and her persistence was rewarded. She received the reward that Jesus promised when he said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

    Then again, how many of us have prayed persistently to God that he would answer our prayer and have yet to be answered? I think most of us at some point or another have experience the exasperation of prayer unanswered, or at least seemingly so. We can be so frustrated when a loved one is ill or unemployed, or whatever, and God seemingly does not hear.

    But the discipline of prayerful persistence is not like wishing on a star or anything like that. There’s no magic to our words. We may or may not be rewarded with the exact gift we pray for. But we will always be rewarded with the loving presence of our God in our lives. In fact, maybe God’s answer to our prayer is “no” – for whatever reason – but even in that “no” we have the grace of a relationship that has been strengthened by our prayerful persistence.

    The Psalmist prays, “Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.” This Lent, may the discipline of persistence in prayer lead us to a renewed and enlivened sense of the Lord’s will in our lives.

  • Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Ancient sources say that we are to pray the Lord’s prayer at least seven times daily. Why? Because the Lord’s prayer in all its wonderful simplicity reminds us that we can turn to our heavenly Father who knows our needs and cares for our welfare. It reminds us that the best opportunities we have to live the Gospel come when we turn to God who is bigger than our sins, more than generous enough to cover our deepest needs and longings, more than holy enough to sanctify our poorer efforts at discipleship and charity. It reminds us that God is God and we are not.

    To those of us who are concerned with our own prestige and dwell on our own ego, the Lord’s prayer says “hallowed be God’s name.” When we would like all of our problems solved on our own terms and everyone to do things our own way, the Lord’s prayer says, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…” For those times when we over-consume the goods of the earth, or want more than we can afford, or covet things we don’t need, the Lord’s prayer says, “give us this day our daily bread” – because that’s all we need. For us sinners who prefer to hold grudges against others, the Lord’s prayer says, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And when we stray into all sorts of temptations and give in to all the wrong things, the Lord’s prayer says “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

    The Lord’s prayer is powerful in all its simplicity. Whether we say it seven times a day or even just once, we need to say it with full thought of what we are asking of our God. And God will hear and answer that holy prayer. For his is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    “For he who made the promise is trustworthy.”

    Brothers and sisters in Christ, if these are the only words we take from this holy place today, we’re doing pretty well.  The essence of our faith is based on this rock-solid statement from the writer of Hebrews: “For he who made the promise is trustworthy.”  That’s true, of course, and I think we can all agree with it on the intellectual level.  But people of faith have to go deeper than that; we have to be people whose living is wrapped up in the truth of that statement: “For he who made the promise is trustworthy.”

    If we really believe that, then nothing should ever stop our witness.  We should not be stopped because we think we don’t have the words, or the talents to be a witness for the faith.  That doesn’t stop us because God has promised to give us the words and whatever else we need in those moments, and he is trustworthy.  We should not be stopped because we are afraid of commitment, because God has promised us a life that is better than anything we can imagine if we but take up our cross and follow him.  And he is trustworthy.  None of our objections or insecurities should stop our discipleship, our living for Christ, because God has promised to great things in us.  And he is trustworthy.

    And so we place our lamps on the lampstand, unafraid of the watching world looking to us, because we’re not shining our own light but rather Christ’s.  We encourage each other in faith and good works because we have the promise of our trustworthy God to take us wherever we need to go.

  • Saturday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Saturday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever seen a fig tree?  I haven’t.  But I can tell you I’d be pretty frustrated if I had cared for a fig tree for three years and never saw one bit of fruit.  I think we could all understand the man wanting his gardener to cut the tree down and give the good soil to some other plant.  Having nourished the plant and watered it and put in hours pruning it and doing all the things it takes to care for a tree, nothing has come of it.  Time to get rid of it and move on.

    And so, one could certainly understand if God would turn out to be just like that frustrated man.  Having cared for, fed, nurtured, guided and corrected us sinners, when we don’t bear fruit, certainly in his frustration, God would be justified in blotting us out and never giving us a second thought.

    But God is not the frustrated man in the parable, is he?  No, God is the gardener, the one who has really done all the work of nurturing, and he is amazingly patient.  The gardener says of the tree, “leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future.  If not you can cut it down.”  And so God is with all of us.  God gives us another chance, even when we’ve had so many chances before, even when it seems like we just aren’t worth the trouble.  But God is patient.

    And we are better than fig trees.  We know enough to respond to the nurturing of our God.  Our prayer today leads us to reflect on those ways in which we have borne fruit, and those times that we have been fruitless.  We are being cultivated and fertilized yet again at this Mass, so may we be fruitful in the days and years to come.

  • St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr

    St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr

    Today’s readings | Today’s saint

    [Mass for the junior high school children.]

    Of all birds, sparrows are probably the most insignificant.  They are small in size and dull in color.  They undertake no great flights.  They live in bushes rather than in trees.  Though they are found in vast numbers all over the world, we take them completely for granted.  They so blend in with the earth and their surroundings that we hardly ever notice them.

    In today’s Gospel, Jesus wants us to know how far God’s love for us and care for us and knowledge of us goes.  In doing that, he didn’t talk about swans or eagles, even though these birds make a much more splendid appearance as opposed to the humble sparrow.  But listen again to what he says about them: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father knowing.”

    By this he means that everything that happens to any of his creatures, whether they are roaring lions or tiny sparrows, whether they are world leaders, or little children, whether they are great or insignificant, God still cares for them – they are still important to God.  He notices what happens to us, no matter who we are, he cares for us and wants us to be with him forever.

    In our day, there are lots of things to worry about.  Many people right now are worrying about the economy.  Will we be able to stay in our homes or will we lose them?  Will we be able to pay our bills?  Can we still afford to live in a safe place?  And there are lots of other things we worry about too.  We worry about people we love when they are sick.  We worry about passing tests, whether they are tests in school or medical tests.  We worry about our family and friends who are off in foreign lands fighting difficult wars.  There is no shortage of things to worry about.

    But Jesus reminds us today that we are in God’s hands.  The hairs of our head have been counted.  We are worth more than millions of sparrows, and God notices every single one of them.

    St. Ignatius of Antioch was a bishop at the end of the first and beginning of the second century.  At that time, Christians were often persecuted, this time under the Emperor Trajan.  Christians were being forced to deny Christ or lose their lives.  Many of them chose to give their lives for Christ, and Ignatius was one of them.

    When he was in prison, Ignatius wrote to the people in the churches he led.  He told them not to worry about him.  In fact, he told them not to try to intervene for him, not to try to stop what was going to happen.  He knew he would die for his faith, but he didn’t want them to try and stop it.  He was not worried about his life, because he knew that God would take care of him.  He wrote:  “No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.”

    He was killed for his faith and became a martyr.  We celebrate his courage on this feast day for him.  We celebrate his faith in Jesus, that faith that told him there was nothing to worry about because God loved him and valued him more than many sparrows.

    What we need to do today is to give our worries back to Jesus, to remember that we are in his hands, and to tell him that we trust in him.  After our prayers of the faithful, we are all going to come forward and offer our worries back to Jesus so that we can put them in his hands as we celebrate the Eucharist today.  After you come forward to give your worries to one of our students who will place them before the altar, I want you to return to your seat and imagine yourself giving that worry to Jesus.  Imagine him taking it from you, reassuring you that you are worth more than many sparrows, and imagine him embracing you and reassuring you that you will be cared for.

  • Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I reflect often these days on how much less I seem to know compared to what I thought I knew as a young adult.  In those late-teen and early-twenties years, I think so many of us think we have life all figured out and we know how things should be run.  Certainly, there is much to be said about the idealism of youth.  But that idealism can quickly turn to cynicism, and it’s amazing how much more clarity we gain with the passing of the years.  Yet the conflicts between idealistic, even cynical young adults and those wizened by the experience of years can reveal a less-than-healthy generation gap.

    So if you identify with that experience, multiply it by millions and you’ll know the gap in the knowledge between God and humanity.  But as certainly as we must know that, we humans tend to approach our relationship with God as if we had all the answers.  That’s what Job is being chastised for in today’s first reading.  Job is understandably upset by all that has befallen him, but God reminds him that God is in control and that God alone has the big picture.

    The Psalmist tells us that God’s knowledge even extends to how much he knows about us:

    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.
    My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
    with all my ways you are familiar.

    And so, when we are frustrated by the way our life is going, and when we are angry that we cannot see the big picture, perhaps the best prayer is again from our psalmist: “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.”

  • Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

    [display_podcast]

    On March 4th, in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the thirty-second President of the United States, for the first of four terms.  As he began his presidency, the country was in economic crisis, mired as it was in the depression.  There were all kinds of concerns in the country at that time, with the economy going into some frighteningly uncharted waters.  In his Inaugural Address, he addressed those concerns head-on:

    “This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”  That one phrase – “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” – became the watch phrase of his presidency and has been quoted in many terrifying situations ever since.

    Sixty years later, in 1993, for the occasion of his fifteenth anniversary of elevation to the Papacy, Pope John Paul II, of blessed memory, did a series of interviews with Italian Radio that were collected into the wonderful little book Crossing the Threshold of Hope.  The first interview concerned his acceptance of the papacy in his own life.  His Holiness was asked if he ever hesitated in his acceptance of Jesus Christ and God’s will in his life.  He responded, in part:

    “I state right from the outset: ‘Be not afraid!’ This is the same exhortation that resounded at the beginning of my ministry in the See of Saint Peter.  Christ addressed this invitation many times to those He met. The angel said to Mary: ‘Be not afraid!’  (cf. Lk 1:30). The same was said to Joseph: ‘Be not afraid!’ (cf. Mt 1:20). Christ said the same to the apostles, to Peter, in various circumstances, and especially after His Resurrection. He kept telling them: ‘Be not afraid!’ He sensed, in fact, that they were afraid. They were not sure if who they saw was the same Christ they had known. They were afraid when He was arrested; they were even more afraid after his Resurrection.

    “The words Christ uttered are repeated by the Church. And with the Church, they are repeated by the Pope. I have done so since the first homily I gave in St. Peter's Square: ‘Be not afraid!’ These are not words said into a void. They are profoundly rooted in the Gospel. They are simply the words of Christ Himself.”  And these words – the simple three-word phrase – became the watchwords of his papacy: “Be not afraid!”

    Both of these courageous men echoed the words of the Gospel that had formed them.  Roosevelt had been formed in an Episcopal boarding school whose headmaster preached the duty of Christians to help the less fortunate.  He had lived through polio.  Pope John Paul as Karol Wojtyla had lived through and beyond the Communist control of his country, buoyed as he was by his Catholic faith.  Both of them heard the same words we have in today’s Gospel, words that inspired and encouraged them, and words that they lived by:

    “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
    Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
    Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
    So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

    These words echo through a world that is, at times, an extremely frightening place.  Even now, our own country faces some very uncertain times, and we are in a place we haven’t been in some time.  Wars rage on in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Relations with many other nations are strained.  Some of our traditional allies have not been able to stay with us.  Prices on everything from oil to milk are skyrocketing.  It’s hard for us to see where our society will be in the near or distant future.

    Then, too, we have worries in our own lives.  So many people are facing the prospect of losing their jobs.  Unemployment is creeping to a level we haven’t seen in some years.  People are in danger of losing their homes.  Then there are the periodic worries that affect us all from time to time: illnesses suffered by ourselves or a loved one, the death of those close to us, raising children in a society that has more opportunities for danger than have been present in the past.

    To all of our worries, both global and personal, the words of FDR, the words of JPII, the words of Jesus himself confront us: BE NOT AFRAID.  The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  You are worth more than so many sparrows.  Not a hair of your head goes uncounted.  God is in control.  We worry when we can’t see the big picture, or even the light at the end of the tunnel.  But the only words we need to focus on are the words our Savior shouts into the vortex of our whirlwind world today: BE NOT AFRAID.  God is in control, and his power is sufficient for any worry, global or personal.

    I don’t bring you this message casually or even glibly.  I know the pain of many of these situations.  I have seen it on the faces of those I have been with in even just two years of priesthood when times are difficult.  But I continue to firmly believe that God is sufficient for our weakness, as St. Paul often tells us.  The One who can overcome the disaster of sin and death by his own sacrifice on the Cross can certainly help us through the rocky roads our lives sometimes travel through.  So be not afraid.

    Jesus echoes the words that our Psalmist sings today:

    “See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
    you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
    For the LORD hears the poor,
    and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.”

    God will not forget us, not even forget a hair on our heads.  We are worth more than many sparrows.  Be not afraid.