Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: righteousness

  • Monday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So the readings that we have today are not meant to be of comfort to the afflicted; rather their intent is to afflict us who have been just a little to comfortable.  It seems that the Church at Corinth had enthusiastically accepted Paul’s preaching of the Gospel, but while the cat was away, well, you know the rest.  It seems they had become known not so much for their integrity and faithful living of the Gospel, so much as for their degenerate actions, actions that apparently would have made the pagans blush.  Paul, as the father of their community, comes down on them pretty harshly, and well does he do so, so as to save them from the fires of hell.

    In the Gospel reading, we see those scribes and Pharisees once again on the lookout for anything they can use to discredit and condemn Jesus.  They know that the man’s withered hand would not be something Jesus the healer could overlook.  So Jesus asks them if it is okay to do nothing on the Sabbath and so let evil continue to reign, or would it be better to actually do some good, to actually reach out in compassion to bind up the broken and heal the sick?  One would think the call for true justice would stir somewhere in their hardened hearts, but obviously their penchant for legalism allows them to use the letter of the law to condemn the One who came to manifest the spirit of the law.

    So if we feel a little uncomfortable having heard the proclamation of these readings, they we certainly have experienced them in the spirit they were offered.  The Liturgy of the Word today calls us to look at our own lives and root out everything that is contrary to the Gospel.  In the quiet places of our day today, a rather honest examination of conscience would do wonders for our lives of faith.

    It is the Psalmist today who allows us to pray that we might not fall into the traps of degeneration, apathy and self-righteousness:  “Lead me to your justice, Lord.”  Lead us to your justice, indeed.  Help us to live lives of integrity that proclaim the Kingdom of God with its call to repentance.  Help us to remember that Sabbath rest is supposed to strengthen us for Gospel service.  Help us to embrace the spirit of the law by loving others as you love us.  Lead us to your justice, Lord.

  • The Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    The Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    Today’s readings

    I think that if you took a survey, nearly everyone would want to say that they are righteous, that is, that they do the right thing.  But I also think that survey would reveal how amazingly different each person’s definition of righteousness would be.  One person’s idea of righteousness might be that they do what everyone else is doing – how could that be wrong?  Everyone does it.  Another person’s idea of righteousness might be rather selfish: they do what’s best for them, or for their family – they take care of number one.  Still another view of righteousness might be that one picks and chooses a set of rules by which they decide to live their lives, and never deviate from them to one side or the other.  This view, of course, was the view of the Pharisees who had over six hundred such rules by which to abide.

    If you’re wondering what’s wrong with any of these, today’s Scriptures have the answer.  Jesus tells us that none of these self-righteous positions is going to cut it: those who follow him have a much more strenuous rule of life, and we call that rule the Gospel.

    Do you count yourself among the blessed because you’ve never murdered anyone or participated in an abortion?  Well, that’s a good start, but if you’ve harbored anger against another person, if you have refused to forgive them, if you have marginalized a person because of their race, or their language, or their religion, or their sexual orientation, or because of a physical disability, if you have belittled people by sarcasm or bullying, if you have hated another person in any way at any time, then you’ve murdered them in your heart, you’ve violated the fifth commandment, and that’s not okay.

    Do you feel righteous because you’ve never had extramarital relations with another person?  Great, but that’s just a start.  If you have had lustful thoughts about another person, if you have looked at pornography, or fantasized about a relationship with another person; if you have nurtured a relationship that is improper in any way, then you have violated the sixth commandment, and it’s time to turn back.

    Do you feel that your word is good as gold because you have never lied under oath?  Again, it’s a good start, but if you’ve told a lie of any kind in any situation, even a white lie in most circumstances, if you have not told the whole truth when the truth was called for, if you have misrepresented the truth in any way or have not lived what you believe and profess, then you have violated the eighth commandment and have been dishonest to some degree.

    These are not words of comfort today, are they?  I bring these all out in my preaching today because Jesus makes them urgent.  I do it with a sense of deep humility, because I know that I have failed in some of these things more times than I’d care to admit.

    Jesus tells us today, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  That seems pretty harsh.  The Scribes and Pharisees had those six hundred or so laws by which they lived their lives, and some of them were pretty nit-picky if you ask me.  So how can we ever hope to enter the kingdom of heaven?  It just seems like an impossible task, doesn’t it?

    But what Jesus is asking of us isn’t to come up with a list of a whole lot more nit-picky rules.  Jesus is asking us to embrace the spirit of the law, and to live it with integrity.  That too is daunting, but the good news about choosing to live that kind of righteousness is that it comes with grace.  It comes with the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on us to live the Gospel.  We have to pray for that grace every day, and we have to strive to live the rather rigorous righteousness that Jesus calls for in today’s Scripture readings.

    As the writer of Sirach in our first reading tells us, this kind of righteousness is a choice that we must make.  He says,

    He has set before you fire and water
    to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.
    Before man are life and death, good and evil,
    whichever he chooses shall be given him.

    When we make the wrong choice, or fail to make the right choice, we have sinned.  But we know that our sins are not who we are and are not who we are called to be.  We have the Sacrament of Penance to set us back on the right path and to wash our sins away.  If you haven’t made a confession in a while, now is the time.  Take advantage of the healing grace our Lord longs to pour out on you.  I’m always amazed at how much joy I feel when I have gone to confession.  It’s the only cure for our unrighteous thoughts, words and actions.

    Jesus gives us an incredible challenge in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  But he does not leave us without the grace to live it out.  We just have to choose, every day, to live the Gospel.  We have to pray, every day, for the grace to do that with integrity.  And when we fail, we have to receive the Sacrament of Penance so that the grace to do better will be poured out in our lives.  It’s not the easiest way to live our lives, but it is the most blessed.  As the Psalmist says today, “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.”

  • Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Jesus had his skirmishes with the Scribes and Pharisees, but today he seems particularly exasperated with them.  And who could blame him?  They of all people should have known who Jesus was and should have been on board with what he was trying to accomplish.  But instead, they settle for the mere appearance of righteousness instead of really repenting of the evil inside them.

    And we could really think ill of them for that.  But we must remember that Matthew’s gospel wasn’t written just to make the Scribes and Pharisees look bad.  It’s supposed to be an example for us and lead us to repentance.  So what inside of us needs to go today so that we may not just appear righteous, but also be clean inside?  May our Eucharistic Lord help us to be disciples in word and in deed.

  • Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In the ancient Hebrew, the word we have for righteousness and justice is sedeq, which most literally means right order. The idea is that when things are as they were intended to be by God, then the poor will be taken care of, nobody’s rights will be trampled on, and God’s grace will be evident in every situation. So this idea of sedeq is of course a frequently-mentioned topic in the prophets’ preaching. Today we have the prophet Jeremiah pointing out the lack of sedeq in the community of the Israelites: “for they broke my covenant,” Jeremiah prophecies, “and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.”

    There is just one possible antidote to the infidelity of the people, and that is God’s loving-kindness. The Hebrew language has a word for this, too, and that is hesed. It is summed up in the way the Lord wishes to bring the people back into right relationship as Jeremiah says: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

    The hesed that Jesus brings is still more radical, and that turns out to be a problem for Peter. He knows well enough who Jesus is: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But when it turns out that the way for Jesus to make all that happen and unleash God’s ultimate loving-kindness is for Jesus to die, that doesn’t set well with Peter. “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”

    The thing is, for hesed to happen in any situation, someone pretty much always has to lay down their life. It might be physically as Jesus did on the cross, but it could also be by letting a disagreement go, pursuing forgiveness even at the cost of being right about something on principle, or giving up one’s own desires so that others can be nourished. And Satan knows that hesed is the worst thing in the world that can happen for him. So he always wants us to say “God forbid, Lord! Why should you have to die? Why should I have to die?” But we have to put such thoughts aside. We have to think as God does, not as human beings do.

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent: Come, O King of all the Nations

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent: Come, O King of all the Nations

    Today’s readings

    We hear a similar song from Hannah and Mary today. In fact, many Biblical scholars suggest that the song of Mary we heard in today’s Gospel is a restatement of the song of Hannah that we have in today’s psalm. Whether or not that is true, it is clear that both women give birth to a child by the grace of God, and both women’s sons are destined for greatness. Samuel’s strength is a foreshadowing of the strength of Jesus Christ who will overcome sin and death.

    Samuel becomes a great king, but it is Jesus who becomes King of all the Nations, which is the title of Jesus we celebrate in the “O Antiphons” today. The verse from vespers prays, “O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O Keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.”

    Today we anxiously await the strength of Christ, King of all the Nations, the only joy of every human heart. He alone can save us from our sins. He alone can unify the hearts of all humankind, putting to an end, once and for all, the sad divisions that keep us from the communion we were always meant to have with one another.

    And so we pray, Come, O King of all the nations.  Come, be our strength, be the One who leads us in the ways of righteousness, be the joy of every heart that seeks you.  Help us to find the peace that only you can bring.  Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly and do not delay!

  • Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time [B]

    Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time [B]

    Today’s readings

    Nobody ever becomes rich and famous by being righteous.    We may never forget who interrupted an awards show or a presidential press conference with an immature comment, but the most truly righteous people will hardly be remembered.

    How many people even care about the idea of being righteous?  The world is so often full of jealousy and selfish ambition.  Indeed, we commend people who make good deals (for themselves, anyway), who get ahead (regardless of the cost), who get rich quick.  These people are strong, self-assured, ambitious, and clever.  Sometimes they are even entertaining.  But would we ever call them righteous?  Not very often, I think.

    So our idea of who is a person worthy of our admiration needs to change a bit, I think.  Jesus puts it very plainly in today’s Gospel: “If anyone wishes to be first,
    he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”  That, after all, was the way that he lived his life, and the way that he expected his disciples to live as well.  This is the Jesus who said goodbye to his disciples by feeding them with his own body and blood and washing their feet.  He is the one who cured the sick and preached the word no matter what day it was, Sabbath or not.

    Saint James in the second reading urges us all to be truly wise, not covetous and envious and full of hate.  He urges us toward the wisdom of the righteous one, the one who has the wisdom from above, who is “first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity.”

    The problem is, though, that the righteous one doesn’t always live a stress-free life.  Nice guys, as the proverb goes, tend to finish last.  And so, as our first reading tells us, the just one is often seen as an obnoxious irritant to those who do not see with wisdom from above.  And so they set out to knock the just one down a peg or two: “With revilement and torture let us put the just one to the test,” they say, “that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience.”

    Jesus knows that just this kind of treatment is in store for him, and he discusses it with the Twelve as they walk along, out of the way of the crowds, so that he might better teach them what is to come. “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.”  But the Twelve, as usual, miss the point.  And rather than ask the Teacher what he means, instead they engage in a frivolous argument about who among them is the greatest.

    In some ways, it’s the classic schoolyard disagreement.  “My dad can beat up your dad.”  Or, even better, maybe it’s the classic sibling rivalry: “Mom likes me best.”  These things are sort of understandable among children.  Children growing up need to know where they fit in to the structure of society, so there are a lot of comparisons going on all the time.  But when that kind of argument begins to take place among adults, it’s not at all charming.

    Jesus says that the way a person becomes first among us is that he or she gives everything, empties himself, becomes the last of all and the servant of all.  This is a spiritual principle called kenosis or “self-emptying” that calls the Christian disciple to go deep into himself or herself and to give up all of the back-biting, ambitious attitudes that come so naturally to us fallen people, and instead give everything they have and are for others.  This is righteousness, and it comes at a great cost.  This is our calling as followers of the Lord.

    We have to realize that our salvation will only come about by pouring out our lives for our brothers and sisters.  We may think we can become number one by looking out for number one only.  We may think we can get ahead by tending to our own interests first and foremost.  But Jesus tells us today that quite the opposite is true.  To become number one, to really get ahead, we must serve all of our brothers and sisters.  We must lay down our lives in every way possible and raise up others whenever we see them down.  Getting this right, becoming truly righteous, will involve us tending to the needs of others first and foremost, knowing that God will take care of the just one.

  • Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel is perhaps a bit more vivid for me this week, because on Sunday I spent time weeding the side yard at my mother’s house.  It’s not a task I really look forward to, but it is kind of good in that when you finish a job like that, you can look at it and see something good happened.  There’s a sense of accomplishment.  When Father John and Father Jim and I had lunch yesterday, we talked about what we did over the weekend.  Father Jim joked that the difference between a weed and a plant was where it was growing.

    That’s the kind of question the disciples had for Jesus today.  Jesus had just told them several parables about the kingdom of God, and this one didn’t get read in the Gospels the last few days.  So we have the explanation, but not the parable.  You can check it out in the 13th chapter of Matthew.  The story basically went that the landowner sowed good seed in the field, but when it started to grow, weeds came up too.  His laborers asked him about it and he said, “An enemy has done this.” So they wanted to pull up the weeds, but the master said to let them grow together until harvest time, lest in pulling them up they also accidentally pull up the good plants.  They could then be pulled up and burnt at harvest time.

    Now I think a good gardener might quibble with the analogy.  But that’s not the point.  The point is good news, and the good news is this: however much we may resemble the weeds during our life, Jesus gives us the time to grow into much lovelier plants during our lives.  He doesn’t blot us out of the book of life for one transgression.  But the warning is that we only have so much time until the harvest.  If we are going to turn to the God who sowed us and provide good fruit, we need to do it now.  If we wait until the harvest, it may well be too late.  Our God gives us the freedom to choose to be the good seeds in the field of the world, blessed are we who choose to grow that way.

  • St. Barnabas, apostle

    St. Barnabas, apostle

    Today’s readings

    “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that
    of the scribes and Pharisees,
    you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”

    Barnabas, a Jew of Cyprus, comes as close as anyone outside the Twelve to being a full-fledged apostle. He was closely associated with St. Paul (he introduced Paul to Peter and the other apostles) and served as a kind of mediator between the former persecutor and the still suspicious Jewish Christians.

    When a Christian community developed at Antioch, Barnabas was sent as the official representative of the Church of Jerusalem to incorporate them into the fold. He and Paul instructed in Antioch for a year, after which they took relief contributions to Jerusalem.

    We see in today’s first reading that Paul and Barnabas had become accepted in the community as charismatic leaders who led many to convert to Christianity. The Holy Spirit set them apart for Apostolic work and blessed their efforts with great success.

    Above all, these men hungered and thirsted for righteousness, a righteousness that went beyond the mere rules and regulations of the scribes and Pharisees, a righteousness based on a right relationship with God. This is a righteousness that could never be disputed and the relationship could never be broken. Just as they led many people then to that kind of relationship with God, so they call us to follow that same kind of right relationship today.

    As we celebrate the Eucharist today, we might follow their call to righteousness by examining our lives. How willing are we to extend ourselves and reach out to others and not be bound by mere human precepts? Blessed are we who live in right relationship with God and others. Blessed are we who follow the example of St. Barnabas and blessed are we who benefit from his intercession.

  • Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Friday 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. The story serves as a beautiful support to the acquittal of the adulterous woman, in which 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 evil thoughts and flood darkened hearts with the piercing light of God’s justice. We ourselves have no right to judge others if our 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 us the hope that God in his mercy will always hear the cry of the poor and give to the downtrodden the salvation 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.