Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: St. Peter

  • The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Put Out Into Deep Water

    The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Put Out Into Deep Water

    Today’s readings

    “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”

    A command to do something, and a promise – that  is what happens in this early interaction Simon Peter has with Jesus.  And it had to be exasperating for Simon, because, as he says, they’ve been hard at it all night long and their efforts were fruitless.  They’re tired, they’re frustrated, and possibly even a little embarrassed and scared because this was their life’s work and by the accounts we have in the Gospels, they weren’t very good at it.  But something in the command, and in the person of Jesus, convinced him to lower the nets.  And Jesus makes good on the promise that came with the command: they netted a catch, and not just any catch, but a big enough catch to fill two boats beyond capacity.  A command, and a promise fulfilled.

    “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”

    If you get the idea that we’re not just talking about fish here, you’re catching on, so to speak.  Putting out into deep water is a command we could all use to take a bit more seriously.  Because I think we all settle for looking around on the shallow end, and honestly, we don’t find much of anything in shallow water.  Here’s the shallow water that I think we spend our time in way too often: binge watching television shows; getting our news off of questionable sources on the internet and television and believing them like they were the holy Gospels; accepting our eighth grade catechesis and faith formation and never engaging it at an adult level; insisting on our own way in personal relationships, loving our sins, and tuning out the world in such a way that we never have to grow in our humanity.  And that’s a short list.  It’s shallow water, and if we are honest, we all look for our food there way too often in our lives.

    Today, Jesus invites not just Simon and the others, but also us: “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”

    If Simon could fish in the deep water after a long night of the same old nothing happening, we too can accept our Lord’s invitation to go deep and expect a catch too.  I think this is something worth looking at.  As I mentioned, you can almost hear the exasperation in Peter’s voice: “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing…”  They have given up.  All they wanted to do was go home, clean up, and call it a day.  But I think it’s not just that they have given up on that day’s catch.  They have given up completely.  They have failed to make a catch more than once, and they may have given up hope that there were any fish to be caught. 

    Are we in that place too?  The pandemic seems to be going on and on and on: the things we were doing to protect ourselves and our loved ones no longer seem to be working.  Numbers surge and ebb, and hospitals fill, and people die.  Pandemic-weary people argue over mandates and bicker over what is best.  Experts tell us one thing, and if you don’t like that, you can find an expert to tell you something else.  But that’s really only the surface of the scary things that rage around us.  Crime rages in our cities and nobody has a worthwhile solution.  I keep waiting for someone to write a book called No Suspects Are In Custody, because no one even wants to risk helping anyone or being part of a solution.  Meanwhile one politician points the finger at another for just about every problem we can imagine.  There isn’t respectful dialogue anywhere anymore: not on talk shows, not in Congress, not in communities.  Everything is so disheartening that we just want to give up, go home, and call it a day.

    What difference does it even make if we try to change things?  No one wants to listen, no one wants to change, no one wants to grow.  We’ve given up on ourselves and don’t even see ourselves as worthy of the deep water and the experience of growth. 

    But Jesus does.  “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”

    Peter was in that place, but Jesus saw more in Peter than Peter did in himself.  He saw the one who could be zealous and on fire and make mistakes and accept forgiveness and live to grow and walk on water and witness to the Resurrection, and nourish a fledgling Church.  Peter was an extremely unlikely leader: he couldn’t even lead his crew to make a catch of fish when it was his life’s work.  But Jesus sees the miracle in the unlikely.  And so he commands him: “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”  And you know what?  Peter’s nets are full beyond capacity; beyond his wildest dreams.

    Jesus sees so much more in us than we see in ourselves.  But we have to be willing, as Peter was, to try again, to go deep, and to expect a catch.  We have to be willing to learn new things that challenge our preconceived notions.  We have to be willing to expose ourselves to good sources of information and faith formation.  We have to be willing to listen to others, even if we don’t agree, and expect to learn something from the interaction.  We have to be willing to look for what Jesus wants us to catch in every situation, and willing to stay with it, no matter how exasperated we are.

    During our parish’s Year of the Eucharist, we are preparing many spiritual, faith formation, and leadership development opportunities.  We will all have the opportunity to grow in our faith and catch people and bring them to the banquet that is the Kingdom of God.  But we ourselves have to be willing to go deep, to challenge ourselves, and to be part of the movement to live as Eucharistic People. 

    Lent is coming. Lent is a call to conversion, re-conversion, and growth in discipleship. Lent is the quintessential call to put out into deep water.  We would do well to remind ourselves yet again this Lent that it is God who chooses us, that it’s not about what we can do, that it’s always God who gives us the grace to do truly great things, that our unworthiness does not define us in the eyes of God, and that God knows of what we are capable and sees great things in us. Maybe Lent can find us putting aside whatever fears keep us from answering God’s call and instead allow ourselves to be truly changed, truly used by God to do great things.

    “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”

  • The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Here’s something I want you to remember today, and cling to in your spiritual life: We can’t do anything good in our spiritual lives all by ourselves.  We can’t be perfect disciples all by ourselves.  We can’t bring other people to Jesus all by ourselves.  We can’t overcome sin in our lives all by ourselves.  We can’t speak up for the marginalized or take a stand for life all by ourselves.  We can’t vote for the right candidate all by ourselves.  We can’t raise our children all by ourselves.  We can’t love the other people in our lives as they should be loved all by ourselves.  Take any good thing and put it in that formula: whatever it is, we can’t do it all by ourselves.

    And we shouldn’t.  But what we should do is stop doing things that way as if that was ever going to work.

    So over the past several Sundays, we have been seeing a lot of one of my favorite characters in the Gospel, and that is Saint Peter.  Just three weeks ago, the Apostles were out in a boat, and Jesus came to them on the water.  Saint Peter asked our Lord to command him to come to him on the water, and he did, and we all know how that went.  Then last week, Jesus was quizzing the Apostles about who people said that he was.  Peter was the one who spoke up and professed that Jesus was the Christ, the coming Anointed One, and Jesus proclaimed Peter the Rock on which he would build the Church.

    And here we are today, just a couple of verses later in Matthew’s Gospel, and Peter is in the spotlight again, but this time for a far different reason!  So, for context, it’s important to realize that Saint Peter, like all of the Jews of that time, had a preconceived notion about what the Messiah would be like, and what he would come to do.  The Messiah was to be a great king and military leader, championing the people and overcoming their enemies, giving them political and military peace and safety.  That’s how people thought about the Messiah in those days.  Peter was still clinging to those old notions, and so he could not fathom that Jesus would have to suffer and die.  And so Jesus chastises him for thinking not as God does, but as people do.  It’s a mistake we all make time and again in our spiritual lives.

    Peter’s faith journey was like that: up one minute, and down the next.  One minute he’s walking on water, the next he’s drowning; one minute he speaks eloquently of his Lord, and the next he’s the voice of temptation.  So maybe it seems like Saint Peter, flawed as he was, was an inappropriate choice to be the pillar of the Church, the first of the Popes.  But our Lord never makes any mistakes.  He chooses who he chooses for a reason, and I think that’s what we have to spend some time looking at today.

    If Peter was unqualified for the position to which he was called – and it certainly seems like that was the case – then we have to expect to feel unqualified for the roles to which we have been called.  Parents often feel that way when they start to raise their first child.  Priests feel that every time they witness something incredible – which is a lot of the time.  We are all unqualified, but God sees more in us, he sees our heart, he sees who he created us to be, and he won’t rest until we’ve fulfilled that potential.  It’s often said that God doesn’t call the qualified, but instead qualifies those he has called.  If that’s true, then Saint Peter is the patron saint of that!

    If Peter made some mistakes along his journey of faith and discipleship – and he clearly did – then we have to expect that we will make mistakes in our own faith journey.  One minute we’ll have a glimpse of God and we’ll feel like we could never let him down, then the next minute we’ll fall into sin, maybe a sin we’ve been struggling with for so long, and we’ll feel like God couldn’t possibly still love us.  But he loved Peter all through the good and bad, and he loves us, no matter what.  He pulled Saint Peter out of the stormy waves, and he will reach out and pull us out of our own storms of failure, as often as we cry out to him.

    The one thing you can’t fault Saint Peter for is his courage.  Eleven other guys stayed in the boat, but Peter wanted to be where our Lord was: out on the water.  Eleven other guys kept their mouth shut when Jesus asked who they said he was, but Peter did his best to make a profession of faith.  Even what he said in today’s Gospel was probably what the rest were all thinking, but he at least had the guts to say it out loud.  His life wasn’t perfect, his discipleship wasn’t perfect, his faith had a long way to go, but he knew that he couldn’t leave our Lord forever.  Even when he blows it in the hours before Jesus died and denies our Lord three times, he accepts our Lord’s forgiveness and fulfills the role Jesus gave him in last week’s Gospel.

    Saint Peter’s story kept being written all throughout the Gospel narrative, and our story isn’t finished yet either.  Our Lord loved Saint Peter and he loves us too.  What we have to do is rely on that love, accept God’s forgiveness, and get out of the boat and go to Jesus.  We have to stop thinking like people do, and start thinking with the mind of Christ.  We have to stop trying to do good things in our lives all by ourselves and start doing them with the grace and power of Christ that can accomplish anything in anyone.

    He can make a lousy fisherman the rock on which he would build his Church.  He can do great things in us too.  If we let him.

  • Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter

    Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter the apostle. This is a feast that commemorates Jesus giving the servant authority of the Church to Saint Peter, as we heard in today’s Gospel. This is a special day of prayer for the Pope, the successor of Saint Peter among us.

    It’s important to remember that Saint Peter was not chosen because he was perfect, but instead because he was faithful. Even after he denied Jesus, he turned back and three times professed his love. That’s an important lesson for us, because we too may have failed our Lord time and time again, but he always gives us the opportunity to turn back, to be forgiven, to profess our love, and to be part of his mission once again.

    In today’s Scripture, Saint Peter proclaims that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the One who comes in God’s name. Making that proclamation is the task of the Church in every place, and in every age. We disciples are called to faithfulness, just as Peter was; we are called to conversion, just as Peter was; and we are called to witness to the authority of Christ in every situation: in our Church, yes, but also in our workplaces and in our homes. With the Lord as our shepherd, there is nothing we shall want in any situation.

  • The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    So over the past several Sundays, we have been seeing a lot of one of my favorite characters in the Gospel, and that is Saint Peter.  Just three weeks ago, the Apostles were out in a boat, and Jesus came to them on the water.  Saint Peter asked our Lord to command him to come to him on the water, and he did, and we all know how that went.  Then last week, Jesus was quizzing the Apostles about who people said that he was.  Peter was the one who spoke up and professed that Jesus was the Christ, the coming Anointed One, and Jesus proclaimed Peter the Rock on which he would build the Church.

    And here we are today, just a couple of verses later in Matthew’s Gospel, and Peter is in the spotlight again, but this time not for anything really good!  So, it’s important to realize that Saint Peter, like all of the Jews of that time, had a preconceived notion about what the Messiah would be like, and what he would come to do. Peter was still clinging to those old notions, and so he could not fathom that Jesus would have to suffer and die.  And so Jesus chastises him for thinking not as God does, but as people do.  It’s a mistake we all make time and again in our spiritual lives.

    Peter’s faith journey was like that: up one minute, and down the next.  One minute he’s walking on water, the next he’s drowning; one minute he speaks eloquently of his Lord, and the next he’s the voice of temptation.  So maybe it seems like Saint Peter, flawed as he was, was an inappropriate choice to be the pillar of the Church, the first of the Popes.  But our Lord never makes any mistakes.  He chooses who he chooses for a reason, and I think that’s what we have to spend some time looking at today.

    If Peter was unqualified for the position to which he was called – and it certainly seems like that was the case – then we have to expect to feel unqualified for the roles to which we have been called.  Parents often feel that way when they start to raise their first child.  Priests feel that every time they witness something incredible – which is a lot of the time.  We are all unqualified, but God sees more in us, he sees our heart, he sees who he created us to be, and he won’t rest until we’ve fulfilled that potential.  It’s often said that God doesn’t call the qualified, but instead qualifies those he has called.  If that’s true, then Saint Peter is the patron saint of that!

    If Peter made some mistakes along his journey of faith and discipleship – and he clearly did – then we have to expect that we will make mistakes in our own faith journey.  One minute we’ll have a glimpse of God and we’ll feel like we could never let him down, then the next minute we’ll fall into sin, maybe a sin we’ve been struggling with for so long, and we’ll feel like God couldn’t love us.  But he loved Peter, and he loves us.  He pulled Saint Peter out of the stormy waves, and he will reach out and pull us out of our own storms of failure, as often as we cry out.

    The one thing you can’t fault Saint Peter for is his courage.  Eleven other guys stayed in the boat, but Peter wanted to be where our Lord was: out on the water.  Eleven other guys kept their mouth shut when Jesus asked who they said he was, but Peter did his best to make a profession of faith.  Even what he said in today’s Gospel was probably what the rest were all thinking, but he at least had the guts to say it out loud.  His life wasn’t perfect, his discipleship wasn’t perfect, his faith had a long way to go, but he knew that he couldn’t leave our Lord forever.  Even when he blows it in the hours before Jesus died and denies our Lord three times, he accepts our Lord’s forgiveness and fulfills the role Jesus gave him in last week’s Gospel.

    Saint Peter’s story kept evolving, and ours isn’t done yet either.  Our Lord loved Saint Peter and he loves us too.  And that’s all it takes for great things to happen.

  • The Third Sunday of Easter: Do You Love Me More Than These?

    The Third Sunday of Easter: Do You Love Me More Than These?

    Today’s readings

    What Satan wants is a community of disciples so mired in their sins, that they do nothing to foster the Kingdom of God and live the Gospel. Bookmark that thought, because I’ll come back to it in a bit.

    I love today’s Gospel because it features one of my favorite characters, Saint Peter. Saint Peter has been inspirational to me because, despite being called to do great things for God, he does a lot of messing up and often has to pick himself up and start all over again. Today’s Gospel reading has him trying to figure things out. He’s very recently been through the arrest and execution of his Lord, only to find out that he is risen, and has appeared to various disciples, including Peter himself. I think today’s story has him trying to make sense of it all and figure out where to go from here. But he’s trying to figure it out in the midst of having fallen again, since he denied even knowing the Lord three times on the night of Holy Thursday.

    So, in an effort to figure things out, he goes back to what he knows best, which is to say he goes fishing. And he takes some of the others with him. And, as is very typical of Peter’s fishing expeditions recorded in the Gospels, he catches nothing even though he’s been hard at it all night long. It’s not until the Lord is with them again and redirects their efforts, that they eventually pull in an incredibly large catch of fish. Jesus then invites them to dine with him, using one of my favorite commands in all of Sacred Scripture, “Come, have breakfast.”

    Then we have this very interesting, and in some ways tense, conversation between Jesus and Peter. Jesus takes him off to the side after breakfast, and just as he redirected Peter’s efforts while they were fishing earlier, now he redirects Peter’s efforts in his life. There are a couple of points of background that we need to keep in mind. First, just as Peter three times denied his Lord on the night of Holy Thursday, so now Jesus gives him three opportunities to profess his love and get it right.

    Second, the Greek language has a few different words that we translate “love.” Two of them are in play in this conversation. The first is agapeo, which is the highest form of love. It’s a love that always wills the best for the other person, a love that is self-sacrificing and enduring. It’s the love that God has for us. The other kind of love that is used here is phileo, a bit lower form of love that is something like a strong affection for someone else. Where agapeo is an act of the will, phileo is more of a feeling. Many scholars don’t see this as an appreciable difference and say John in his Gospel just uses two different words to mean the same thing. But I think John is careful with language, and the two uses mean something, as we will see.

    So the conversation begins, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” That’s literally a loaded question, so let’s look at it. First of all, Jesus calls Peter “Simon, son of John.” But Jesus is the one who changed his name from Simon to Peter. So this seems to be a bit of a rebuke: Okay, Peter, if you’re just going to revert to your former self and pretend you haven’t known me the last three years, then I’ll just use your old name. I’m sure Peter didn’t miss the inference. Then at the end, “do you love me more than these?” Scholars have a lot of opinions on what “these” are: Do you love me more than you love these other guys? Do you love me more than these other guys love me? Do you love me more than this fishing equipment, the tools of your former life? It doesn’t matter what he meant by “these,” the effect is the same: Peter is called to a higher love, which is evidenced in the word Jesus uses for love, which is agapeo. Peter responds, acknowledging Jesus’ omniscience, “Lord you know that I love you.” But he uses phileo, perhaps acknowledging that he is not capable of the agapeo kind of love. And he’s probably right about that, since sin does diminish our capacity to love. He receives the response “Feed my lambs,” of which I’ll say more later.

    The conversation continues in the same manner, using the same forms of the word “love” in both the question and the response, and ending with the injunction, “Tend my sheep.” But the third question is interesting. Jesus asks the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” But this time Jesus uses the word phileo, as much as to say, “Okay, Peter, do you even have affection for me?” And Peter seems to get the inference, because he responds emotionally: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” And he’s right: Jesus does know. But Jesus needed Peter to know it too. Jesus, in his Divine Mercy, has healed Peter, forgiven his sins, and helped him to remember his mission, redirecting his efforts to “Feed my sheep.”

    Because if Jesus hadn’t done this, Satan would have won. He would have had that community of disciples so mired in their sins, that they do nothing to foster the Kingdom of God and live the Gospel. And then we wouldn’t be here today, would we?

    And let’s be clear about this. We, like Peter, all have a mission to accomplish. We all have some part of the Kingdom to build. We may not be the rock on which Jesus will build his Church, but we are indeed part of it. And we are all affected by our sins. We have all denied our Lord in one way or another by what we have done and what we have failed to do. And so the Lord in his mercy says to us today, “Patrick, do you love me?” “Susan do you love me?” And we respond with whatever love we’re capable of. In that moment, Jesus redirects our life’s efforts too, so that we can do what we’re called to do. We, who have been purified by our Lenten penance, are now called to the life of the Resurrection, in which all God’s lambs are cared for, and all his sheep tended.

  • Saints Peter & Paul, Apostles

    Saints Peter & Paul, Apostles

    In today’s Gospel, Peter and the others are asked, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Now, both Peter and Paul were committed to the truth about who Christ was. They had too much at stake to let that go. Having both messed up their estimation of who Jesus was earlier in their lives, they knew the danger of falling into the trap. So for them Jesus could never be just a brother, friend or role model – that was inadequate. And both of them proclaimed with all of their life straight through to their death that Jesus Christ is Lord. We too on this day must repent of the mediocrity we sometimes settle for in our relationship with Christ. He has to be Lord of our lives and we must proclaim him to be that Lord to our dying breath. We must never break faith with Saints Peter and Paul, who preserved that faith at considerable personal cost.

    Perhaps Saints Peter and Paul can inspire our own apostolic zeal. Then, as we bear witness to the fact that Jesus is Lord of our lives and of all the earth, we can bring a banal world to relevance. Perhaps in our renewed apostolic zeal we can bring justice to the oppressed, right judgment to the wayward, love to the forgotten and the lonely, truth to a society that settles for relativism, and faith to a world that has lost sight of anything worth believing in. One might say that that is the Church’s mission, but actually the mission is what is of primary importance. And so we believe that the apostolic mission has a Church, and it’s time for the Church to be released from its chains and burst forth to give witness in the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

  • The Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    This month we’ve been seeing a lot of one of my favorite characters in the Gospel, and that is Saint Peter.  Just three weeks ago, the Apostles were out in a boat, and Jesus came to them on the water.  Saint Peter asked our Lord to command him to come to him on the water, and he did, and we all know how that went.  Then last week, Jesus was quizzing the Apostles about who people said that he was.  Peter was the one who spoke up and professed that Jesus was the Christ, the coming Anointed One, and Jesus proclaimed Peter the Rock on which he would build the Church.

    And here we are today, just a couple of verses later in Matthew’s Gospel, and Peter steps in it yet again.  Because Peter was still clinging to the old notions of what the Messiah would be, he could not fathom that Jesus would have to suffer and die.  And so Jesus chastises him for thinking not as God does, but as people do.  It’s a mistake we all make time and again in our spiritual lives.

    Peter’s faith journey was like that: up one minute, and down the next.  One minute he’s walking on water, the next he’s drowning; one minute he speaks eloquently of his Lord, and the next he’s the voice of temptation.  So maybe it seems like Saint Peter, flawed as he was, was an inappropriate choice to be the pillar of the Church, the first of the Popes.  But our Lord never makes any mistakes.  He chooses who he chooses for a reason, and I think that’s what we have to spend some time looking at today.

    If Peter was unqualified for the position to which he was called – and he clearly was – then we have to expect to be unqualified for the roles to which we have been called.  Parents often feel that when they start to raise their first child.  Priests feel that every time they witness something incredible – which is almost all the time.  We are all unqualified, but God sees more in us, he sees our heart, he sees who he created us to be, and he won’t rest until we’ve fulfilled that potential.

    If Peter made some mistakes along his journey of faith and discipleship – and he clearly did – then we have to expect to make mistakes in our own faith journey.  One minute we’ll have a glimpse of God and we’ll feel like we could never let him down, then the next minute we’ll fall into sin, maybe a sin we’ve been struggling with for so long, and we’ll feel like God couldn’t love us.  But he loved Peter, and he loves us.  He pulled Saint Peter out of the stormy waves, and he will reach out and pull us out of our own storms of failure, as often as we cry out.

    The one thing you can’t fault Saint Peter for is his courage.  Eleven other guys stayed in the boat, but Peter wanted to be where our Lord was: out on the water.  Eleven other guys kept their mouth shut when Jesus asked who they said he was, but Peter did his best to make a profession of faith.  His life wasn’t perfect, his discipleship wasn’t perfect, his faith had a long way to go, but he knew that he couldn’t leave our Lord forever.  Even when he blows it in the hours before Jesus died and denies our Lord three times, he accepts our Lord’s forgiveness and fulfills the role Jesus gave him in last week’s Gospel.

    Saint Peter’s story kept evolving, and ours isn’t done yet either.  Our Lord loved Saint Peter and he loves us too.  And that’s all it takes for great things to happen.

  • The Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter the Apostle

    The Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter the Apostle

    Today we celebrate the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter the apostle.  This is a feast that commemorates Jesus giving the servant authority of the Church to Saint Peter, as we heard in today’s Gospel.  This is a special day of prayer for the Pope, the successor of Saint Peter among us.

    It’s important to remember that Saint Peter was not chosen because he was perfect, but instead because he was faithful.  Even after he denied Jesus, he turned back and three times professed his love.  That’s an important lesson for us, because we too may have failed our Lord time and time again, but he always gives us the opportunity to turn back, to profess our love, and to be part of his mission once again.

    In today’s Scripture, Saint Peter proclaims that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the One who comes in God’s name.  Making that proclamation is the task of the Church in every place, and in every age.  We disciples are called to faithfulness, just as Peter was; we are called to conversion, just as Peter was; and we are called to witness to the authority of Christ in every situation: in our Church, yes, but also in our workplaces and in our homes.  With the Lord as our shepherd, there is nothing we shall want in any situation.

  • Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    Today’s readings

    In today’s Gospel, Peter and the others are asked, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  We heard this Gospel story just last weekend.  Now, both Peter and Paul were committed to the truth about who Christ was.  They had too much at stake.  Having both messed up their estimation of who Jesus was earlier in their lives, they knew the danger of falling into the trap.  So for them Jesus could never be just a brother, friend or role model – that was inadequate.  And both of them proclaimed with all of their life straight through to their death that Jesus Christ is Lord.  We too on this day must repent of the mediocrity we sometimes settle for in our relationship with Christ.  He has to be Lord of our lives and we must proclaim him to be that Lord to our dying breath.  We must never break faith with Saints Peter and Paul, who preserved that faith at considerable personal cost.

    Perhaps Saints Peter and Paul can inspire our own apostolic zeal.  Then, as we bear witness to the fact that Jesus is Lord of our lives and of all the earth, we can bring a banal world to relevance.  Perhaps in our renewed apostolic zeal we can bring justice to the oppressed, right judgment to the wayward, love to the forgotten and the lonely, truth to a society that settles for relativism, and faith to a world that has lost sight of anything worth believing in.  One might say that that is the Church’s mission, but actually the mission is what is of primary importance.  And so we believe that the apostolic mission has a Church, and it’s time for the Church to be released from its chains and burst forth to give witness in the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

  • Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    It seems like just yesterday that John the Baptist was baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River.  Oh wait, it was just yesterday!  But today’s reading fast forwards a bit and takes us to a time after John has been arrested.  John isn’t dead yet, not yet out of the picture, but clearly he is decreasing, as he said in Saturday’s Gospel reading, so that Jesus can increase.

    And Jesus is certainly increasing.  His ministry is kicking into full swing, and he begins by preaching that the kingdom is at , and he begins to call his followers.  Simon and Andrew, James and John, two sets of brothers, two groups of fishermen, give up their nets and their boats and their fathers and turn instead to casting nets to catch men and women for God’s kingdom.

    You know, even though today is the first day of Ordinary Time, we continue some aspects of Christmas and the Epiphany right up until February second, the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So today’s Gospel fits right in with that.  Today’s Gospel gives us a little more light to see what Jesus is up to.  He calls us all to repentance and to accept the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.  He says to us just as he said to Simon, Andrew, James and John: “Come follow me.”  The year ahead can be an exciting spiritual journey for us.  Who knows what Jesus will do in us and through us and with us to further the kingdom of God?  We just have to answer that wonderful invitation – “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”