Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: witness

  • The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Rite of Welcoming of Candidates for Full Communion

    The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Rite of Welcoming of Candidates for Full Communion

    Today’s readings

    There are a lot of experts out there.  And those experts will be happy to give you their opinion.  Really, there is no shortage of places these days from which you can get information.  Television, print media, and especially the internet – God knows what we did before the days of Google! – all of these will gladly disgorge information on just about any topic, and so the days of searching high and low for information are pretty much long gone.

    But one has to wonder about the quality of the information that we get.  Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it true!  We know that.  And ask any teacher and they will probably tell you that they are sick of students quoting Wikipedia and their lot.  Even if a site isn’t intentionally giving poor information, there’s almost no way to verify what they’re telling you, unless they have provided proper sources or footnoted their claims.

    And the same is certainly true for those who would give us opinions on religion.  I can hardly count the number of religious opinions I have been given that began with the words “In my opinion…” or “I think…” If you hear someone start a comment on religion or morality with those words, you have my permission to stop listening to them, because quite frankly, it’s very likely going to be a waste of your time.  When it comes to matters of faith and morals, one’s opinions don’t really matter; what is important is what is truth.

    In today’s Gospel, the people are astonished at what Jesus was teaching them.  They couldn’t believe their ears.  And what is striking about that is that they are astonished because Jesus was obviously preaching with authority, “and not as the scribes.”  That’s a pretty sad condemnation of the scribes of the day, because the scribes were charged with copying the Scriptures and making sure the faith was taught to all people.  If they couldn’t be trusted to speak the truth, well then, who could?

    What is astonishing for them is that they finally found the One they could trust: the One who spoke with authority.  Jesus didn’t give them some lame opinion or say “I think…” No, he gave them revealed truth, revealed in his words, and in his miracles, and ultimately in his sacrifice.  The religious leaders of his day might not like what he was saying to them, but they certainly could not refute the Truth he preached.

    And that Truth wasn’t just for that one time and place.  That Truth is authoritative today.  Against the widespread opinion that one can be “spiritual but not religious” – whatever that means; against those who think that human life is expendable, or that it can be manufactured for research, or that it can be regulated by government mandate; against those who think that matters of conscience and freedom of religion don’t matter when they become inconvenient; against those who think that any religion is just as good as another, or that religion should never tell people what is right and wrong – against all these lies, Jesus’ Truth stands eternal.

    Today, our Candidates for Full Communion with the Church have joined us and we have welcomed them.  We are one in Baptism, because our Creed proclaims one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  But they wish to draw nearer to Christ and to be one with us in the Eucharist, to be Confirmed in our faith.  They will receive these sacraments soon, and today we pledge to journey with them.  Together, we embrace the Truth our Christ reveals and we proclaim the truths that make us one Body, one Spirit in Christ.

    Our Psalmist today reminds us that if today we hear God’s voice, we should not ever harden our hearts.  As we continue our worship today, may we renew our commitment to seek the voice of God in every moment, embracing the Truth that is revealed to us.  And may we be a people who open our hearts to that truth, and eagerly live it and proclaim it by the way we live our lives.

  • Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Right at the end of today’s first reading is one of the most chilling lines in all of Scripture: “and they did die.”  The people’s faith was sorely tested: would they give in and worship the false gods of the people around them so that they could have some kind of peace and security, or would they prefer to stand up for what they believed and more likely than not, give their lives for their faith?  Many gave up and gave in and worshipped the false gods.  But many stood their ground and clung to their belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

    But, let’s be clear about this: they all died.  In some way.  Those who were martyred literally gave their lives for the faith, we get that.  But those who chose to give up and give in brought about the death of their culture and the death of their souls.  Sure, they may have had some kind of peace and security now, but who would protect them if the people they allied themselves with were overtaken?  And that is to say nothing of their eternal souls.  They did die.

    The persecution never ends.  It would be easier in our own day to give in and accept abortion as a necessity, or to accept whatever special interest groups think is best for us, or keep our faith private and never share it or show it in any way.  Our culture would like that; they would appreciate our willingness to blend in and not give offense.  But that would be the death of our way of life and our spirituality.  It will surely cost us to witness to our faith, to challenge co-workers when a business deal blurs the lines of morality, to insist that our children attend Church on Sunday before they go to a weekend-long soccer tournament, or whatever the challenge may be.

    But better that we die a little for our faith than that we die without faith at all.

  • Easter Monday

    Easter Monday

    Today’s readings

    Well, it wasn’t all that long ago that we saw the disciples scatter in fear, was it?  Here they had seen their friend arrested, tortured, and killed, so one could not blame them for running scared.  I’m sure I would have done no different if I had been them.

    But in today’s first reading, we see them different.  They have witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, they have seen him alive.  More than that, they have been filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit, that great gift he had promised them all along.  And so now they get it.  Now they realize what he had been saying to them, and now they have courage and fortitude to proclaim the Gospel.

    “God raised this Jesus, of this we are all witnesses,” Peter says on their behalf.  They have entered into mystagogia … that time following a great event when those involved look back on what they have experienced, and come to new understandings based on those experiences.  Their mystagogia of the Easter event has given them fresh hope and courage, and has empowered them to proclaim the message.

    We didn’t have any baptisms here this Easter Vigil, but many were baptized into the Church and Christ Jesus throughout the world.  They are experiencing mystagogia in these days.  They are looking back on their reception into full communion with us, and reflecting on what they have learned and how they have grown in their faith.  We cradle Catholics also experience mystagogia in these days.  Our baptisms are not as fresh in our minds as are the baptisms of our new brothers and sisters, but we recall with gratitude and profound joy the saving sacrifice that has given us hope of new life.  So we too, like the apostles, are empowered to proclaim the message.

    God has raised this Jesus from the dead, and we are witnesses of these things, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Praise God!  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

     

  • The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    The Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time [A]

    Today’s readings

    I think today’s Gospel reading has some intriguing images for us.  Salt and light are basic things, but they certainly are things with which we can relate, things we experience on a daily basis.  Salt and light are things that have an effect on everything around them.  Add a little salt to some soup and you bring out the flavor.  Turn on a light and you don’t fall down the stairs.  So if we are salt and light, then we must have an effect on the world around us as well.

    I like to cook, and so the reference to seasoning is one that gets my imagination going.  You have to have some salt in food that you’re cooking or the meal will be bland and lifeless.  We’ve all had under-seasoned food, and when we did we probably felt underwhelmed.  We knew there was something missing.  Now I can’t imagine salt losing its saltiness.  In fact, I googled this and there was a science-type person taking this question on and he indicated that salt, in its crystalline form, is pretty stable; it doesn’t lose its flavor.  So Jesus was using, as he often does, hyperbole to get our attention.  Suppose for the moment that salt could lose its saltiness: what would it then be good for?  Nothing, of course.

    Jesus seems to be insinuating that we, as the salt for the world, could lose our saltiness.  We could become under-seasoned by skipping Mass to attend a sports event or sleep in.  We could become under-seasoned by neglecting our prayer life.  We could become under-seasoned by watching the wrong things on TV or surfing the wrong sites on the internet.  We could become under-seasoned by holding on to relationships that are sinful.  And when that starts to happen, our ability to season our world with the presence of Christ is diminished bit by bit.

    When I talk to second-graders about sin, in preparation for their first confession, I often use the image of light and darkness.  Again, I do that because it’s an image they can grasp.  I ask them how many of them are or at least were afraid of the dark.  I think we all are or were to some extent afraid of the dark.  Even now, when you hear a noise in the middle of the night, don’t you find it just a little more frightening because it’s dark?  There is good reason to be afraid of the dark: you could fall or trip over something, some danger or person could be hiding waiting to leap out at you.  I could go on, but I don’t want you calling me in the middle of the night if you can’t sleep!

    And so, I ask my second-grade friends, what do you do to make the dark a less scary thing?  And the answer is, of course, that you turn on a light.  The light changes everything: you can see the obstacles over which you might have fallen.  Anything lurking in the dark will now be identified in the light.  Sometimes a quick look around with the lights on will assure you that that noise you heard was just the house settling, or the furnace firing up, or something similarly innocuous.  The light just makes you feel a little safer.

    And so we are called to be light too.  We don’t need much time to think about how dark our world can be at times.  We see on television the news about war and crime and terrorism and new diseases and things we shouldn’t be eating.  We hear about children bullying one another and people stalking others on the internet.  A quick moment of reflection reminds us of our own sinfulness; the bad that we have done and the good we have failed to do.  Darkness in our world can be pretty pervasive at times, and it makes the world a rather frightening place.

    But we have the light.  We’ve been exposed to the light.  We have come alive in Jesus, the Light of the world.  We just finished celebrating Christmas and Epiphany in which Jesus came to our dark world to be made manifest, to walk among us and lead us on our pilgrim way to heaven.  On Wednesday, if you were one of the five or so people brave enough to forge your way through the blizzard and join Father Raj for Mass at 7:00, you celebrated Candlemas – the Presentation of the Lord, the closing epiphany that propelled the infant Jesus into his ministry in the world.  We have the light, shining in the very dark place that is our world.

    As those gifted with the Light of the world, we become people of light.  We become light for the world too.  Jesus insists that our light should shine so brightly that we affect the darkness of our world, completely overcoming that darkness with the Light of Christ.  He insists that we are now that city, set on a hill, that cannot be hidden.  And we know how true that is.

    We may know the truth of that in rather negative ways in these past years.  Our Church has been the city set on a hill affected by scandal, first in the United States, then into Europe and other places.  People saw what happened, it was set on a hill and could not be hidden.  We have been ashamed and grieving in the years since.

    And that’s what Satan wants for our Church.  He wants to see us set on a hill and ashamed.  He wants us to be seen by the watching world doing nothing, because we have lost our way.  But that’s not what God wants.  He still calls us to be the light for the world.  People do see us, and have to see us doing good in big ways and small ways, so that other people will see the way to God and take delight in the ways we have seasoned the world.

    I have a very small example.  I was cooking the other day, and realized I’d forgotten just three things that I needed.  So I went to Jewel at 4:30 on Friday afternoon.  I quickly found what I was looking for and headed to check out.  The lines, of course, were a little long at that time on Friday night.  But the man ahead of me, noticing I had just three items, invited me to go in front of him.  The man in front of him did the same, and soon I was at the head of the line.  I thanked them, and as I headed out to the car, I wondered if I would have done the same thing.  I’d like to think I would have, but I don’t know.  What I did do was to say a prayer for them, which I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have thought to do had they not shown kindness to me.  And heaven only knows the good that prayer may have done for them and those around them.

    St. Therese of Liseaux used to talk about doing little things with great love for the glory of God.  She found joy in her “Little Way” and it has inspired so many people ever since.  Our Liturgy today calls us to do little things and big things, all for God’s glory.  It calls us to be salt for a world grown bland with despair and light for a world dwelling in a very dark place.  In our first reading, the prophet Isaiah tells us how to do it:

    Share your bread with the hungry,
    shelter the oppressed and the homeless;
    clothe the naked when you see them,
    and do not turn your back on your own.
    Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…

    If neglecting our prayer life and our integrity causes us to lose our saltiness, if giving in to shame and despair puts out our light, then we can never do what we were created for.  But we have been given salt and light to season and light our world.  We are the city set on the hill for all the watching world to see.  Would that they might see us doing little things and big things, all for the glory of God.

  • Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Our first reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians this morning could well have been written to all of us today, couldn’t it?  He speaks of a crooked and perverse generation, and all we have to do is watch the news to see examples of that in our own day and age.  And so his challenge to them is one that we should take on as well – to “shine like lights in the world,” holding on to the word of life.  We do this by being people of prayer, people of service, people of witness, and above all, people of integrity.  In what way is God calling you to shine like a light in this dark world?

  • Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The job of a prophet is not an easy one.  And we should all know, because we are all in some ways the prophetic seeds the Lord is sowing in the world.  We might fall on good soil, or amongst rocks or thorns, but wherever we are, we are expected to bear fruit.  We are called upon to preach the Word in our actions and sometimes our words, no matter how difficult a job it can sometimes be.  And we prophesy knowing that our words and actions come from our God who is the one who places those words on our lips in the first place.  Our witness can be an authentic one if we remember the words of the Psalmist today: “O God, you have taught me from my youth, and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.”

  • Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s scriptures are full of place-names.  The places seem meaningless to us so far away in both time and place.  But in those days, those places were extremely important.  Isaiah speaks of Jerusalem, Damascus, and Samaria, strategic places in the ancient near east.  The Old Testament of course places preeminence on Jerusalem, God’s dwelling-place.  God sent Isaiah to prophecy that all of these would be torn down unless the people’s faith was firm.

    In the Gospel, Jesus mentions Chorazin and Bethsaida, Tyre and Sidon, Capernaum, and even Sodom.  He says that unless Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum learn the lessons of Tyre, Sidon and Sodom, their fate would be much worse than those condemned places.

    And so, what of Glen Ellyn, then?  Is our faith strong enough to pass the test of today’s Scriptures?  The only way we can be sure is through our faith and our witness.  We must be certain that each of us individually is living our faith to the fullest, so that our lives give witness to others.  Then, with the grace of God, we can convert our village, and our nation, and even our world.

    Our task on earth is to build, with God’s help, an earthly city that will lead all people to the Kingdom of God.  Our prayer of faith today is, in the words of the Psalmist, God upholds his city forever.

  • Wednesday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Giving the right example is incredibly important for the disciple.  We don’t want to lead anyone astray either through carelessness or through bad intent.  That’s why Elijah decided to have it out with the prophets of Baal once and for all.  He proved conclusively – through the power of God – that there is no god but our God.  And woe to those prophets of Baal who were later put to death for their actions.  In the same way, Jesus laments those who lead his little ones astray.  Today we examine all of our actions and purify our example that God alone may be glorified.

  • Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes we get an idea and it seems well, a little uncomfortable.  We may well have had a call or even a gentle moving from the Lord, and are afraid to act on it.  Today’s Scriptures speak to those of us who are sometimes hesitant to do what the Lord is calling on us to do.

    I think St. Paul must have been exhausted by this point in his life.  As we hear of him in our reading from Acts today, he is saved from one angry mob, only to learn he is to go to another.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  He has borne witness to Christ in Jerusalem, but now he has to go and do it all over again in Rome.  And underneath it all, he knows there is a good chance he is going to die.

    In the Gospel today, Jesus prays for all of his disciples, and also for all those who “will believe in me through their word.”  And that, of course, includes all of us.  He prays that we would be unified and would be protected from anything or anyone who might seek to divide us from each other, or even from God.  He says that we are a gift to him, and that he wishes us to be where he will be for all eternity.

    What we see in our Liturgy today is that God keeps safe the ones he loves.  If he calls us to do something, he will sustain us through it.  Maybe we’ll have to witness to Jesus all over again or we’ll have to defend our faith against people in our community or workplace – or wherever – who just don’t understand.  We might well feel hesitant at these times, but we can and must go forward, acting on God’s call.  When we do that, we can make our own prayer in the words of the Psalm today: “Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.”

  • Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s first reading finds Saint Paul proclaiming Christ to the Greeks at the Areopagus.  These people were Gentiles, of course, even pagans.  But, as Paul noted, they had an altar to “an unknown God,” and so he finds them very religious.  And so he connects Christ to that unknown God, making him known to them, and is able to convert a few there.  At the heart of this event is the truth that God known, in some way, by most people, even if they don’t know it.  Some have said there is a God-shaped hole in our lives, and we can only ultimately fill it with his presence in our lives.  This gives us the mandate to witness to Christ, helping to make him known to all those who don’t know how much they need him.  We know that in Christ, we “live and move and have our being.”  We have to make sure everyone else knows that, too.