Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: spiritual life

  • Friday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today, the psalmist rejoices at having reached the house of the Lord: “And now we have set foot within your gates, O Jerusalem,” he prays.  That reminds me that, in those days, a journey was a serious undertaking.  One didn’t just hop in the car and get to church in five or ten minutes.  The journey to the temple in Jerusalem was probably a long one, on rough, dusty roads, in difficult weather, mostly on foot although one might have ridden an animal.  It was difficult and would take a long time.  For those looking forward to a pilgrimage to the temple, the expectation was probably palpable, and so we can understand the psalmist singing with joy as he arrives – finally! – in that holy place.

    The psalmists goal was the temple in Jerusalem.  Our goal is the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, promised to us by our God as a place where there will be no more mourning or pain, but only basking in the light of the Lord.  Our journey to get there is also long and difficult.  We have to make our way along difficult roads, with all kinds of pitfalls, many obstacles, and much that would keep us from attaining our goal.  We may get frustrated with our slow progress, or even the many times when we lose our footing and end up in places where we’d rather not be.  Sin and frailty seem to claw at us, dragging us down yet again.

    But the goal is always there, and we have our lives to travel that long and winding road.  We yearn for the courts of the house of the Lord just as much as did the psalmist.  We entrust our goal to God’s hands and pray to be open to the grace that he alone can give us to guide us safely there.  Progress along the way may seem slow, but there is progress, and one day, we will get to sing with that psalmist in the new Jerusalem, as we all go rejoicing together to the house of the Lord.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Balance is one of the most important things that we can achieve in life, and yet it is a goal that often seems so fleeting.  That is particularly true of the spiritual life.  So many people find it difficult to have balance in their spiritual lives, even the saints.  Yesterday’s feast of Saint Francis reminded us that even he struggled with balance between contemplation and active preaching.  Eventually his rule of life led to embracing both.

    Today’s gospel reading calls each of us to strike balance.  Martha usually gets the bad rap for not responding to Jesus in the right way.  But I think it’s worth noting that both of them were going all-or-nothing in their way of hospitality.  Martha was cooking and cleaning and serving like nobody’s business.  Mary couldn’t be torn away from the Master Teacher, to whose words she clung with all her strength.

    Sometimes we are called to active service.  Martha is our model for that today.  Sometimes though, and perhaps more often than we embrace, we are called to contemplation, to be present before our Lord and to know his words and his love for us.  In our busy lives, I think we often miss that, and so perhaps the reproach Jesus gave to Martha is one we need to hear too.

    Martha and Mary are, in the end, models for the spiritual life.  If we fast forward to the story of the raising of their brother Lazarus, we find Martha professing the faith and Mary working through her grief.  They have both grown, and perhaps to some extent found balance.  We too have to find that balance between active service and contemplation, and whatever we do, make sure that we cling to Jesus as best we can.

  • Tuesday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When I hear that the road that leads to life is narrow and constricted, that makes me a bit uneasy.  The reason for that is I am a lousy packer.  I pretty much always over-pack, not being able to shake the worry of not having something I might need.  What if the weather is cold?  I’ll need some warm clothes.  If it’s hot, I sure won’t want those warm clothes then, so I’ll need something light.  Better take along some Tylenol in case I get a headache, and well, the list goes on.  I just hate packing to go on a trip, because I always imagine what I pack will take up less space than it does.

    I think that can be true of us on our spiritual journeys as well.  We want to fill up every silence we have.  Better take our iPods, a book in case we’re bored, the laptop so we’ll be able to get our email, our cell phones, and who knows what else.  Heaven forbid we should let the silence be silent so that our God can speak to us.  I’m every bit as guilty of over-packing in that way too.

    But God doesn’t want our iPods or laptops or cell phones.  God just wants us.  He wants us to give him ourselves completely.  Sure, there’s an easier way to go, unfortunately that particular way leads to destruction.  But if we give up what holds us back, then travelling that narrow road to life won’t be so hard.

    What do we need to unpack from our lives today?

  • Monday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    What I think the folks in our first reading need to learn – all of them – is that the spiritual life is always about the big picture.  The Israelites, as I mentioned in my homily yesterday, have completely rejected the God of their salvation.  God had taken them from abject slavery in Egypt, in which they were oppressed beyond anything we could possibly imagine, and led them through the desert, through the Red Sea (covering the pursuing Egyptians in the process), and into safety.  He is going to give them the Promised Land, but they, thank you very much, would prefer to return to Egypt so that they no longer have to sustain themselves on the bread that they have from the hand of God himself.  They would rather have meat and garlic and onions, and whatever, than freedom and blessing from God.  What a horrible, selfish people they have become.

    And Moses is no better.  He alone has been allowed to go up the mountain to be in the very presence of God.  No one else could get so close to God and live to tell the story.  God has given him the power to do miraculous deeds in order to lead the people.  And yet, when things get tough, he too would prefer death than to be in the presence of God.

    And aren’t we just like them sometimes?  It’s easy to have faith when things are going well, and we are healthy, and our family is prospering.  But the minute things come along to test us, whether it is illness, or death of a loved one, or job troubles, or whatever, it’s hard to keep faith.  “Where is God when I need him?” we might ask.  We just don’t often have the spiritual attention spans to see the big picture.  We forget the many blessings God has given us, and ask “Well what has he done for me lately?”

    In today’s Gospel, Jesus feeds the crowds until they are satisfied and have baskets of leftovers besides.  God’s blessings to us are manifold, and it is good to meditate on them when times are good, and remember them when times are bad.  God never wills the trials we go through, and he never forgets or abandons us when we are in the midst of those trials.  God feeds us constantly with finest wheat.  That’s the big picture, and we must never lose sight of it.

  • Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    A while ago now, I was working at my home parish, St. Petronille, on the staff as a youth minister.  I remember the parish secretary well, she was a very nice woman named Dorothy.  Whenever you’d ask Dorothy how she was, she’d always say, “Busy, busy, busy!”  And I’m sure that she was busy, but it was almost like she was defending her job or something, afraid anyone would find her sitting around.  In truth, she was the last person anyone would suspect of slacking off.

    We have some strange readings today.  Part of the issue is that St. Mark’s Gospel is kind of weird.  As you may know, it’s the shortest of the four Gospels we have.  And so when we read it, we find that everything is packed in a very short space.  Our teens have to read a Gospel for their Confirmation project, and many of them pick Mark because it’s the shortest.  The bad news is, that it’s so short, and with so much packed in, that it can sometimes be a lot harder to understand than the others.

    And so as we approach Mark’s Gospel, we almost feel a bit breathless.  The story moves so quickly, and Jesus appears to be a lot like Dorothy: “Busy, busy, busy!”  The man can barely find some time to relax with his disciples, or spend some time in prayer before the crowds are hemming in around him, banging on the door, a whole town’s worth of them, bringing Jesus their hurting and ailing and broken friends and loved ones.  And even though Jesus sympathizes with them, even though he certainly gives them what they ask for, he doesn’t want to be known as the “wonder worker.”  His message is a lot more complex than that, a lot more important than even saving someone’s bodily life.

    And the disciples are part of the problem for him.  They don’t get it yet, so they rapidly get caught up in the frenzy.  “Everyone is looking for you,” they tell him, almost as if they too can’t wait to see what Jesus will do next.  And so Jesus becomes a mirror of Job in our first reading, who gives himself to the drudgery of what’s expected of him, without any rest in sight.

    Do you feel the weariness?  Do you identify with the frenzy?

    I think maybe a lot of us are there right now.  It’s been a long winter, and well, it’s just February, so it could go on another couple of months.  We’ve come through the frantic Christmas season, and just have a couple of weeks to go before we’re into Lent.  Parents, priests, pastoral ministers, all of us are in the middle of frenzy almost all the time.  It can be easy to identify with Job who doesn’t see an end in sight, or at least to feel the frustration of Jesus as he longs to have some quiet time, some time away, to recharge the energy and fill up the reservoir of the Spirit.  And yet it always seems like that time never comes, right?

    So I’m not going to stand here and tell you that you have to take some time to be connected to God or to pray more or to have some peace and quiet.  You know that.  You’d probably give anything to experience it.  You probably even know that that quiet, recharging time would make you a better parent, a better employee or employer, a better teacher, a better doctor, a better whatever it is that you do.  We all have obligations imposed on us, just like St. Paul was obligated to preach the Gospel, and just like Jesus had the care of his flock given to him by the Father.  And just like Jesus, when we sneak away – even rising before dawn to steal away for some quiet and prayer – all too soon everybody is looking for us and it’s time to move on to the next thing, and the thing after that.

    And we know the problem with all of this.  The problem is that when we run on empty for too long, when we lose track of the last time we had an opportunity to recharge, well, then life becomes a drudgery for us.  And it doesn’t matter that our life is blessed beyond imagining.  It doesn’t matter if we have a dream job, or a wonderful family, or if we’re the smartest kid in school, or live in the nicest house on the block.  If we’re depleted of our joy, then even those blessings are drudgery for us.  Job was right about that, he’s right about a lot of things, and we would do well to read him closely.

    So what do we do with this?  How do we make our life less of a drudgery, more spiritual, more connected with Jesus the source and summit of our faith and the source of the energy we need to make our world what it needs to be?  Well, I don’t know that I can give you a recipe.  But I will make some suggestions, and you are free to do with them what you will.

    First, make a commitment.  You’ll never do it if you don’t make a commitment right here and now.  So make that part of your offertory today.  As the gifts are being collected, offer a gift of commitment to spiritual growth as a gift to God and yourself.

    Don’t the commitment a huge one right away.  Many times people will tell me, “Father, I’ve made a commitment to start spending an hour in prayer every night before bed.”  They may certainly make that commitment, but there is no way they’ll live it.  Forget an hour – I mean it.  If you’re starting from zero, give yourself five minutes.  Or even two minutes if that’s all you can do.  Either before your feet hit the ground in the morning, or right before you close your eyes in sleep at the end of the day.  Then let that amount of time grow as the Spirit prompts you.

    Make prayer a part of it.  You have to connect with the Lord, and prayer is the way to do that.  But make it the kind of prayer you can live with.  You don’t need to read a book of the Bible every night before bed, maybe a few verses is what you can do.  If you don’t like to pray the rosary, then don’t promise to do that.  (And I’m not suggesting that you don’t pray the rosary, by the way, I think it’s a very good prayer, and I myself like it, but if it doesn’t work for you then it’s not prayer at all.)  Pray in a way that makes sense to you.

    Make quiet a part of it.  Quiet is the part of prayer when we can hear the voice of God or notice the prompting of the Spirit or even just calm things down for five minutes.  Turn off your cell phone (now would be a good time for that, by the way, if you haven’t already), close the door, it’s just five minutes and you and God deserve that quiet time.  You might not hear anything the first 50 times you do this, but you will, when the time is right, when you’ve learned to really listen.

    If you mess up and miss a day, don’t beat yourself up.  Just give it a shot again tomorrow.  Eventually, you will find, I guarantee, that you cannot live without this time and you’ll not be able to close your eyes in sleep until you’ve done it.

    Be grateful.  Thank God for the two minutes of quiet, or the hour, or whatever it is.  Take note of the blessings that come from it.  Know that all of it is a gift from God and is meant to make your life more powerful and beautiful.

    Lent is coming up in a few short weeks.  That’s a good time to recommit ourselves to receiving the gifts God has for us by spending time in prayer.  Some of the energy for doing that has to come from us, we have to make a commitment to God in some way.  But the rest of it will come from God, this God who knows how important it is for us to steal away for a few minutes, even when everyone is looking for us, before we get up and go on to preach in the nearby villages, or take the kids to soccer, or get to the next business meeting, or come to a meeting at church, or whatever the next thing is that’s in store for us.

    Our lives are complicated and busy, busy, busy.  But, as the Psalmist says, our Lord longs to heal all of us who are brokenhearted, if only we give him a minute or two to do it.

  • Thursday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It’s interesting that in the Gospel reading it’s the unclean spirits who recognize the holiness of Jesus.  The religious leaders of the time didn’t get it, and sometimes I think we don’t either.  The author of our letter to the Hebrews today puts it rather clearly: “It was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens.”  I think we tend to get rather easily the immanence of Jesus: that he is our friend, that he is close to us.  And that’s good because it’s absolutely true.  But sometimes we miss the transcendence of Jesus: his holiness and the fact that he is above and beyond anything we can possibly imagine with regard to grace and divinity.

    If we knew and appreciated the holiness of Jesus, we would never enter the church without a trip to the Tabernacle, even a brief one.  We would call on him to bless all our endeavors and plans because his ability to act on behalf of his beloved comes from his place in the Blessed Trinity.  We would conscientiously genuflect and bow in adoration of him at all the appropriate times.  We would be careful of how we used the name of the Lord in our speech.

    It’s a great gift to us that Jesus is both immanent and transcendent: he is both near to us and far beyond our wildest imaginings.  We can never know him fully, because there is infinitely more of him to know.  That’s what keeps our spiritual lives fresh: we can come to know Jesus and be one with him, but there is always more of him to grasp, more that we can learn, more that we can experience, more that we can love.  That’s why spiritual growth is a life-long process, really a life-long gift.

    And so, today we should take time to step back and see how it is that we have come to know Jesus.  We are grateful for what has been revealed to us, and eager to find what is still to come.  We are grateful that he is close to us, and we rejoice that he is beyond us in ways we cannot even come close to knowing.  If even the unclean spirits are impressed at the holiness of Jesus, then we have to be too.  We have the word of God and the ministry of the Church to remind us of who Jesus is.  Everything we say and do should reflect what the unclean spirits said: “You are the Son of God.”

  • Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    We are in many ways a nation of “doers.”  We spend a lot of time measuring productivity, looking for results, documenting procedures, making things happen.  I think that many of us, myself included, if we were asked, just want to get things done.  I think of the old Nike commercial: “just do it.”  Call it the American work ethic or whatever you’d like, but our motto very often is, “don’t just stand there – do something!”

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word flies in the face of all that kind of thinking.  And because of that, some of us, myself included, are going to squirm just a little bit today.  Because today’s Scriptures don’t call us to do anything.  Instead, they call us to listen, to wait, and to be.  And none of that is going to come easy for us anxious doers.

    Samuel received the call to listen.  We’re told he didn’t really know the Lord just yet; he would have been too young.  His mother, childless, prayed that she would be able to give birth, and promised to dedicate that child to the Lord if she did.  She received what she asked for and when Samuel was weaned, gave him over to the Temple to be in the Lord’s service, under the care and mentorship of Eli, an aged prophet.  And so it is while Samuel is living in the Temple that he hears, with the help of Eli, the call of God for the first time.  When they both finally figure out what’s going on, Samuel gives the reply that Eli had instructed him to make: “speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!”

    And that whole “your servant is listening” part is key.  Because it’s not like the Lord doesn’t speak to us ever.  Instead, I believe he’s speaking all the time.  It’s just that most of the time, we’re not listening.  It’s kind of like having a radio but not turning it on.  Just because it’s not on doesn’t mean that radio stations aren’t broadcasting.  It’s just that we’re not listening.  The same is true for God.  Just because we haven’t tuned in doesn’t mean that God isn’t calling, directing, consoling, answering, or loving.  It’s just that we can’t notice it because we haven’t taken the time to stop talking ourselves and listen.

    Sometimes in our faith life, to be quite blunt, we need to shut up and listen.  We ourselves talk a whole lot.  And all that talking is an obstacle to real prayer.  Whether we’re talking to the person sitting next to us, or talking on a cell phone (at the same time as we’re eating breakfast, reading the newspaper and driving to work – don’t laugh, I’ve seen it!), whether we’re emailing, or instant messaging, or texting – we’re talking all the time.  And all that talking can really drown out the still, small voice of God that is speaking to us and trying to lead us in the everlasting way.  We have to be honest today and admit that most of us really need to stop all that talking and say with Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

    It’s the Psalmist today who urges us to wait.  Psalm 40 is a very beautiful prayer, so I hope you’ll all go home today and mark it in your Bibles and read it all during the week.  There is so much of it that can become our own personal prayer in the days ahead.  The first verse of today’s selection from Psalm 40 says, “I have waited, waited for the Lord.”  That seems harmless enough, but let me read it another way: “I have waited …  waited for the Lord.”  That’s the reading I think the Psalmist is getting at; there isn’t any other reason in Hebrew that the word would have been repeated.  And I think we can all identify with that sentiment at one time or another in our lives.

    How often have we prayed for someone or something, and prayed, and prayed and prayed?  How often have we seemed to wait and wait and still not get a response?  This, in large part, is cultural for us too.  We are a people who expect all life’s problems to be sorted out and fixed in a half hour or hour during prime time, minus, of course, the many commercials.  But that’s not how God works.  God’s time is not our time, and so often that’s really frustrating.

    But our waiting has to be a trusting wait.  It has to be a wait imbued with the real hope that God will stoop toward us and hear our cry, as he did for the Psalmist.  This might mean realigning our hopes and dreams with what God wants for us.  It might mean that God is calling us to go in a new direction.  It might mean waiting until we are ready to hear and accept the way God is answering that prayer of ours.  It might mean waiting until the time is right.  As the Psalmist goes on to say, God doesn’t necessarily want our sacrifices or sin-offerings.  Instead he is looking for us to say “Here I am, Lord, here I am, I come to do your will.”  God is willing to wait for us to be able to say that.  Are we willing to wait too?

    In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks his disciples to be.  Not to do anything, just be.  To live, to follow, to be with him.  When John the Baptist’s disciples begin to seek out Jesus, he says to them, “What are you looking for?”  It’s a question, I think, that takes them a little off-guard.  They don’t have a ready answer – they may have had hopes and dreams of what the Messiah might be like, but here he is in the flesh.  What is it that they’re looking for?  They respond with a question too: “where are you staying?”  For them, it’s enough to get near Jesus, to see what he’s up to.  And so Jesus extends the invitation:  “Come and you will see.”

    He doesn’t give them the itinerary.  He doesn’t list his goals and objectives.  He doesn’t offer a resume or prospectus or promise he will do anything for them.  He just asks them to be: “Come and you will see.”  Because it’s in the living that the plan will unfold.  We have to be with Jesus to see the Gospel come to fruition, to take root and spread.  If all we’re concerned with is checking things off our to-do list, we will miss Jesus entirely, this Jesus who broke all the rules of divinity to come and be with us.

    Now, please understand, I’m not going to tell you that getting things done isn’t worthwhile and necessary.  I get that.  Sometimes, I get that a little too much.  But spiritual growth doesn’t happen very well if that’s all we’re concerned about.  And so, as much as it  makes a lot of us, myself included, squirm, the spiritual life is about listening, about waiting, and about being.  We have to quiet down, slow down, and just be if we want God’s Spirit to take us to places we never thought we could go.

    So maybe this week is a time to make a renewed effort to do that – as incongruous as that may sound.  It will be a real effort for us to quiet down and slow down and just experience life.  But it will be worth it.  Maybe that will give some of us the opportunity to spend time just being in front of the Tabernacle this week.  Or maybe in listening to God’s word in Scripture, or even just being more present to what God is doing in our lives.  The rewards are all there in today’s Liturgy of the Word, too: Samuel’s words – every one of them – were effective; the Psalmist had God stoop toward him and hear his cry; the apostles witnessed the greatest act of love in history.

    And we can too.  All we have to do is to listen, wait, and be.

  • Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today we get a bit of a glimpse as to how Jesus’ day-to-day ministry worked.  We can see three things in particular that characterize how things happened.  First, he journeyed to proclaim the Good News.  He met people where they were, and even sought them out.  This shows us God’s relentless pursuit of the people he loves.

    Second, he brought people with him.  He travelled with the Twelve Apostles, some of the women he had cured of evil spirits and of illnesses, some particular women (Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna), and “many others.”  All of these were drawn to Jesus for various reasons.  We can assume they had all been given some gift: healing, a call to ministry, recognition of their worth – and all of them had responded by wanting to be near him.  This models for us our response to God’s work in our lives.

    And finally, those travelling with him provided for his ministry out of their resources.  Some of the women were well-connected, especially Joanna, whose husband was a high official in the court of Herod Agrippa.  So she would have had resources to help with the ministry as well as leisure to follow Jesus.

    We can hardly visit this gospel reading, though, and not notice the meticulous mention of the women that were among his followers.  In a day where a woman’s participation in anything of a public nature would be totally frowned upon, Jesus reached out to women, and brought them into his ministry.  Certainly the Evangelist would never have mentioned it if it weren’t important to the Gospel itself.

    We come here today for Mass, aware that our God seeks us out in little and big ways every single day.  We too want to be close to him, and respond as did the Twelve, the women, and the “many others.”  Our desire for God and our yearning for forgiveness are themselves God’s gift to us.  Blessed are those who journey with Christ on the way.

  • Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today's readings

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    I have to admit I was totally at a loss with the first reading.  It's hard to read the names, let alone get the meaning.  I think it can be done, but I opted out because I was moved by the Gospel.  And that's totally okay!

    “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  What a beautiful – and challenging – word we have today from the Gospel.  We could use this as an occasion to talk about stewardship, and that might be legitimate.  But I think that Jesus is getting at something a bit different here.  The clue to what he’s getting at, I think, is the little saying that comes right after this.

    “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light;
    but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness.”

    My mother always says that “the eye is the window to the soul.”  That’s kind of what this saying is about.  What is it that we are letting into our souls through the windows of our eyes?  There is an ancient church virtue of the “custody of the eye.”  What we let ourselves see has a direct result on what happens in our spiritual life.  If we find that our lives are off track, that we aren’t praying well, that our relationships are tense at best, well, maybe we’re seeing the wrong stuff.  Television, movies, the internet – all of these provide occasions of sin for all of us.

    And Jesus is right, when we allow our eyes to be bad, our whole body – even our soul – can be in darkness.  If we really treasure our spiritual lives, then our eyes and our hearts will find that they are on things that are worthy of being seen and experienced.  So maybe this summer is an occasion for a little less TV, better chosen movies, and some serious time with a good book, or perhaps, the Good Book!  For where your treasure is, there your heart, and your eye, and your mind, and your soul, will be also.