The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Sirach 15:15-20  +  1 Corinthians 2:6-10  +  Matthew 5:17-37

“Rather, we speak God’s wisdom, mysterious, hidden….”

In the stories of the Old Testament, wisdom often seems a rare commodity.  Although we hear about wisdom in today’s First Reading, it’s spoken of in terms of the Lord Himself, not human beings.  Sirach proclaims, “Immense is the wisdom of the Lord; He is mighty in power, and all-seeing.”  Most of us, I think, grow up thinking about God like that, but we’d hardly attribute those qualities to ourselves.  Likewise, in our First Reading there’s not much about ordinary folks possessing wisdom.

When today’s First Reading does speak about ordinary people like you and me, it’s in terms of making simple moral choices.  Sirach explains plainly, “If you choose, you can keep the commandments”.  He then uses analogies to show how black and white such choices are.  He declares that God “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.”  Sirach portrays moral choices as being so simple, that wisdom hardly seems needed.

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But Saint Paul in our Second Reading bridges the gap between the simple choices of ordinary folks, and the immense wisdom of the All-Powerful Lord.  Through the Power of the Holy Spirit, the Christian is granted a share in the Wisdom of God, and this for a reason.

St. Paul explains that the Wisdom of God isn’t just God’s prerogative.  He chooses to bestow His Wisdom upon His children through the preaching of His apostles.  In this light, St. Paul explains to the Corinthians:  “We speak a wisdom to those who are mature, not a wisdom of this age”.  St. Paul wants the Corinthians to be among this group of “mature” disciples, just as God wants you among this group.  God wants to pour His Wisdom into your heart and mind.

By contrast, St. Paul makes clear that there’s a very different type of wisdom making the rounds in the first century.  St. Paul warns the Corinthians about a worldly, false wisdom:  the “wisdom of this age”.  He contrasts the two when he explains that “we speak God’s wisdom[:]  mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, and which none of the rulers of this age knew; for, if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”  St. Paul makes clear that it’s the crucified Lord of glory who leads us into glory through His mysterious, hidden Wisdom:  that is, the Wisdom of the Cross.  In other words, there’s a great wisdom in self-sacrifice, although to call it merely “great” is an understatement.  There’s an infinite wisdom in self-sacrifice.

When you and I make choices that are wise—not only smart or intelligent, but wise—we follow after Jesus.  Living your life by sacrificing your life for others, as Jesus did, leads us into the Father’s Presence.  By contrast, following the “wisdom of this age” leads to eternal death.  So either way, there is death.  Your choice is whether to embrace death in this world in the form of self-sacrifice, or to allow death to embrace you for eternity, once you’ve breathed your last. 

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Making such a basic choice—between self-sacrifice in this world or eternal death in the next—might seem like a no-brainer.  But for most of us, it’s not, and this is for at least two reasons.

The world camouflages itself in its own false form of glory.  This is what St. Paul in the Second Reading is driving at, in preaching against what he calls the “wisdom of this age”.  The excitement, glamor, glitz, and notoriety that come with spending money and pleasing the senses are a form of glory in the eyes of the world.  So you have to ask:  is it smart to pursue this type of glory?  Is it intelligent?  Is it wise?  It really all depends upon where you’re headed.

The second reason that it’s so difficult to choose the path of self-sacrifice is because even for baptized followers of Jesus, our souls are tainted by what the Church calls “concupiscence”.  Concupiscence is a tendency towards sin that remains within us every day of our life on earth.  There’s no shaking it.  It’s not washed away at our baptism like Original Sin.  Just as gravity constantly pulls you towards the earth, and it takes effort and strength to move your body up against gravity, so it is in the moral life.  Concupiscence is a sort of “moral gravity” that constantly pulls us down towards sin.  To resist requires wisdom, to recognize that we’re being pulled down.  But divine love gives the strength needed to strive against its pull.

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Against all the forces that pull you towards the false glory of “this age”, you have to choose to follow Christ Jesus.  His divine Wisdom shows us the path that leads to Our Father.  But Wisdom doesn’t confer the strength to walk that path.  That strength comes through God’s grace.  The greatest source of grace that Jesus gifted you with was the Gift of Himself at the Last Supper, which becomes present before your very eyes in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Isaiah 58:7-10  +  1 Corinthians 2:1-5  +  Matthew 5:13-16

“… your light shall break forth like the dawn….”

In 2015, I crossed off one of the items on my life’s “bucket list”.  I travelled during the week that Summer starts up to Alaska:  far enough north to spend 24 hours without it getting pitch black.

There’s something about light that’s literally divine.  Painters and poets alike know this, and reveal this through their artistry.  If you were to put, side-by-side, two Renaissance paintings—one of them of the three Persons of the Trinity in Heaven, and the other of satan and other fallen angels in hell—you could be sure that the painting of Heaven would be filled with brilliant hues of white and gold, and maybe just the lightest shade possible of blue, while the one of hell would feature lots of black and dark shades of red and brown.  Likewise, when the Italian poet Dante describes the Inferno that is Hell, he verbally paints a dark portrait of the blindness that comes from the absence of God.  On the other hand, Dante illuminates our understanding of the Beatific Vision of God in Heaven by illustrating in verse those words that we profess in the Creed:  that God the Son is “light from light, true God from true God”.

“God is light.”[1]  Those words come from God Himself in His Sacred Scripture.  But today in our Gospel passage, Jesus declares that “You are the light of the world.”  Jesus speaks these words to His disciples.  So then, in order to help you live out this calling faithfully, and to live out the “good deeds” that are the bread and butter of this calling, the Church offers today’s First and Second Readings to give you a running jump into today’s Gospel passage.

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Today’s First Reading, from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, is very practical.  It’s down to earth.  In Catholic terms, the prophet Isaiah is calling God’s People to carry out what are called “the corporal works of mercy”.  You learned these growing up.  God calls us to care for the physical needs of our neighbors.  These corporal works of mercy are seven ways of expressing our love for our neighbors.  You remember the seven corporal works of mercy:  to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead.

Each of you has opportunities every month to carry these out:  not just among your family and friends, but also among those you don’t even know, who—as Jesus makes plain in the Parable of the Good Samaritan—are also your “neighbor”.  With other parishioners you can travel to the Lord’s Diner to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty.  You can volunteer to serve those at the St. Anthony Family Shelter, and so clothe the naked and shelter the homeless.  Through your parish, you can volunteer to visit the sick at the Catholic hospitals in Wichita, and to visit the imprisoned at jails throughout south-central Kansas.  And within our parish, you can offer your time and talent in offering meals after funerals, in addition to joining in the rosaries and funeral Masses that are offered for the deceased of our parish family, whether you knew them personally or not.

All seven of these corporal works of mercy—as well as the seven spiritual works of mercy—are very practical ways in which you can live out your Catholic Faith.  We do these works of mercy because God commands us to do so.  We do these works of mercy because we love our God and our neighbor.  But the prophet Isaiah gives yet another motive for carrying out these works of mercy.  He prophesies to those who carry them out:  “if you bestow your bread on the hungry… then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.”

The Old Testament promise was that God, who is light, would shine on those who carry out good deeds.  But the Gospel of Jesus promises something more.  The Gospel promises that those who live the Gospel become light, and that God shines through them.  We hear this especially in today’s Gospel passage.

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Today’s Gospel passage comes from the Sermon on the Mount.  In St. Matthew’s account of the Gospel, Jesus saves the best for first.  In other words, He puts His cards on the table from the start.  The Sermon on the Mount is the first great sermon of Jesus recorded by Matthew in his Gospel account.  Immediately after the Beatitudes comes today’s Gospel passage, in which Jesus calls His followers “salt” and “light”.  This includes you.  Jesus is calling you to be “the light of the world.”  But what does this mean in practical terms?

The very last sentence that Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel passage sheds light on what He means (if you’ll pardon the pun).  This final sentence of Jesus is basically a command, but it has three parts.  Jesus commands you this morning when He declares:  “your light must shine before others, / [so] that they may see your good deeds / and [so that they may] glorify your heavenly Father.”

The first two phrases of this sentence seem to make perfect sense, especially given the background of the First Reading.  Jesus a few sentences before had said that “you are the light of the world”, and here He’s saying that “your light must shine before others, [so] that [others] may see your good deeds”.  It would make perfect sense to figure that “your light” consists of “your good deeds”.  At least, it would make sense if not for the last phrase of Jesus’ last sentence today.  Jesus declares that “your light must shine before others, / [so] that [others] may see your good deeds / and [so that others may] glorify your heavenly Father.”  Why would others glorify your Father if it’s your good deeds that they see?

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St. Paul in our Second Reading points us towards the answer.  In preaching to the Corinthians, he offers us the skeleton key that unlocks the meaning of Jesus’ words.  St. Paul says, “I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling … so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom, but on the power of God.”  And what is this “power of God”?  St. Paul answers this question for us, also.  This power is “Jesus Christ, and Him crucified”.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself, destroyed the power of death by His own suffering and death.  So if this is true of Jesus, won’t it be all the more true for us here today?

Often, when God asks us to do something for Him, our reflex is to give God all the reasons why we cannot help Him with His request.  Generally at the top of the list is our explanation to God that we just “can’t do that”.  It’s not within our power, we tell ourselves and God.  But maybe that’s God’s point.  Maybe God wants to use a weak instrument such as yourself, so that His power shines more clearly.  Maybe when you imitate Jesus Christ crucified, by allowing your weakness to be the vessel of God’s power, people will see your good deeds and glorify the Father who loves you enough to ask you to serve Him through your weakness.

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The saints tell us that God asks us often to serve Him this way.  The service God asks may be a small deed, a large deed, or somewhere in between.  It doesn’t matter how big the job is that God asks of you, because if God asks you to accomplish something for Him, He’s also going to give you the means by which to accomplish it:  that means being “the power of God”, which is personal conformity of your life to the life of Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified.

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[1] 1 John 1:5.

The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Zephaniah 2:3;3:12-13  +  1 Corinthians 1:26-31  +  Matthew 5:1-12

“He began to teach them, saying:  ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit….’”

Today’s Gospel passage is the first twelve verses of Matthew Chapter 5:  the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.  In our own day, preachers often begin a sermon with a story or a joke.  Jesus decided to begin His Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes.

However, before he starts giving us Jesus’ sermon, St. Matthew the Evangelist mentions a few interesting details about Jesus.  The evangelist relates to us that when “Jesus saw the crowds, He went up the mountain, and after He had sat down, His disciples came to Him.”  Consider just two points in what St. Matthew explains:  that Jesus went up the mountain, and that He sat down there.

Why did Jesus have to go up a mountain in order to preach a sermon?  Obviously, He didn’t have to.  Jesus preached many other sermons during the three years of His public ministry, and most of them were preached in other sorts of settings.  But in St. Matthew’s account of the Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ first sermon, so Jesus is teaching us here not only by His words, but also by the setting that He chose, and by choosing to sit down.

Why did Jesus choose a mountain to be the site of His first sermon?  St. Matthew clarifies this throughout the course of his Gospel account.  Through his own observations, through the words and works of Jesus that he chooses to include, and through the way he structures his Gospel account, St. Matthew portrays Jesus as a “New Moses”.  One reason for doing this is that unlike many other New Testament writings, Matthew’s Gospel account was written for converts from Judaism.  This is why Matthew “refers to Jewish customs and institutions without explanation [of their backgrounds], and why he works nearly two hundred references to the Jewish Scriptures into his narrative”.[1]

Moses was, for the Jewish people, the Prophet without peer.  In the last chapter of the last book of the Jewish Law—Deuteronomy Chapter 34—following the description of Moses’ death, the Bible says that “there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, … and for all the mighty power and all the great and terrible deeds which Moses wrought in the sight of all Israel.”[2]

Yet even more important than all the signs and wonders and all the great and terrible deeds which Moses worked was the fact that the Lord chose him—Moses—to bear the Ten Commandments to His People.  During the course of their Exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land, God’s People stopped at Mount Sinai.  There, while the rest of God’s People remained below, Moses alone ascended Sinai to receive from God His Ten Commandments.  Moses then had to descend the mountain to give to God’s People this Law, the means by which His People could—we might say today—“keep right” with God.

But here in St. Matthew’s account of the Gospel, it’s not only Jesus who ascends the mountain.  Jesus draws His disciples up with Him, and it’s not a voice from the heavens that speaks there to a prophet.  Instead, the New Moses, God in the Flesh, speaks to His people face to face.  Jesus gives to us, His people, not ten commandments, but nine beatitudes.

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Saint Augustine, in a sermon on Jesus’ promises of blessedness to those who follow Him, points out that “you couldn’t find anyone who doesn’t want to be… blessed.  But oh, if only people were as willing to do the work as they are eager to get the reward!  They all run up eagerly when they are told, ‘You will be [blessed]’; let them listen willingly when they are also told, ‘if you do this.’  Don’t decline the contest if you have set your heart on the prize….  What we want, what we desire, what we are aiming at, will come afterward; but what we are told to do[—]for the sake of what is coming afterward[—]must come now.”[3]

Meditate nonetheless on the first beatitude:  first to fall from Our Lord’s lips because He wants it first to shape our hearts.  “‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’”  St. Augustine preaches on the first beatitude by asking what “poor in spirit” means.  He answers that it means “[b]eing poor in wishes, not in means.  One who is poor in spirit, you see, is humble; and God hears the groans of the humble, and doesn’t despise their prayers.  That’s why the Lord begins His sermon with humility, that is to say with poverty.  You can find someone who’s religious, with plenty of this world’s goods, and not [because of that] puffed up and proud.  And you can find someone in need, who has nothing, and won’t settle for anything. … the [former] is poor in spirit, because humble, while [the latter] is indeed poor, but not in spirit.”[4]

It could be fearful for you to imagine dying and hearing the Lord say to you, “Why did you not become the person I created you to be?”  This question could be fearful because the Lord has given us everything we need to reach Heaven.  The Lord has given us life.  The Lord has given us grace to strengthen us for the journey.  And the Lord has given us the roadmap in these nine beatitudes.  The first, upon which all the others rest, is humility:  poverty of spirit.  The Lord has even helped us to acquire humility, by gazing upon the humility He shows in His compassion, Divine Mercy, and self-sacrifice on the Cross.

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[1] “Introduction to the Gospel according to Saint Matthew”, in The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 4.

[2] Deuteronomy 34:10-12 [RSV-CE].

[3] St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 53, in The Works of Saint Augustine, Part III, Vol. III (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991), 66.

[4] St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 53A, in The Works of Saint Augustine, Part III, Vol. III, 78.

The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Isaiah 8:23—9:3  +  1 Corinthians 1:10-13,17  +  Matthew 4:12-23 [or 4:12-17]

… so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning.

The Word of God became Flesh and dwelt among us.  Yet He dwelt among us so that He could die for us.  On Calvary on Good Friday, the Word sacrificed Himself—Flesh and Blood, soul and divinity—to God the Father.  The meaning of this singular act of self-sacrifice is two-fold:  that sinners might be reconciled to God, so that God might make them His children.

The Word of God is a Person.  This truth is often obscured in regard to preaching.  Preaching, of course, is essential to the Word of God’s ministry.  Nonetheless, the preaching of the Word of God is a means to a far greater end, just as the divine Son in all things leads us to the divine Father.

The ultimate end of all preaching is communion with God the Father, through God the Son, in God the Holy Spirit.  Yet in His divine Providence, God chose to accomplish this communion through the cross of Christ.  All of Jesus’ words and works on earth lead to Calvary.  The cross of Christ is the earthly end—the proximate end—of our discipleship.

This Sunday’s Scripture passages focus our attention upon the Word of God.  The Gospel Reading is from only the fourth of the 28 chapters of Matthew’s Gospel account.  The first two chapters, of course, focus on the advent and infancy of Jesus.  So today’s Gospel Reading takes place early in Jesus’ public ministry, and focuses on the basics.

That’s fitting for this Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.  The beginning of the Church year, of course, focused on the advent and infancy of Jesus.  So today’s Gospel Reading during the early part of Ordinary Time focuses on the basics of following Jesus.

After Jesus calls two sets of brothers to become “fishers of men”, He labors at three works of public ministry amidst “all of Galilee”.  Jesus teaches, preaches and cures the sick.  Yet the fact that the short form of today’s Gospel Reading ends by focusing upon Jesus’ preaching suggests how central preaching is to His public ministry.

In fact, the only words that we hear Jesus preaching in today’s Gospel Reading are:  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Repentance is the first word of Jesus’ preaching the Word of God.  From the perspective of those who hear the Word of God, repentance is the first word of following Jesus.

The Christian repents not just once in his life, because this side of Heaven, he remains a sinner.  When Jesus later commands His disciples to take up their crosses each day[Lk 9:23], this command includes the embrace of daily repentance.

This side of death, it’s only through the cross of Christ that we can enter into union with the Word of God.  That’s not to say that we can’t while on earth also enjoy a foretaste of Jesus’ victory over death.  But entering into the cross of Christ is the door to this victory.  On earth we can only dimly glimpse the resurrection; its fullness can only be known in Heaven.  On earth we can, however, fully experience the cross of Christ.  In fact, we must in order to be His disciples.

Saint Paul in today’s Second Reading draws our attention to the link between preaching and the cross of Christ.  It’s telling that the larger point of this passage is divisions among the Corinthians.  Paul’s remedy for divisions within the Church is the cross of Christ.  He even speaks to one of the pitfalls that he, as a preacher, has to work to avoid.  This pitfall is the “human eloquence” that captivates in the short term but can bear no lasting fruit, and in fact does lasting harm by creating an expectation and desire within Christians for what is shallow.

The depth of the Word of God is only found finally in the cross of Christ.  Every word of the Old Testament is fulfilled in the cross of Christ on Calvary on Good Friday, just as each word and work during Jesus’ public ministry was so fulfilled.  Every word and work of Jesus after His Resurrection, as every word in the New Testament books that follow the four Gospel accounts, as every work of the Church in her holy sacraments, flows from the power of the cross of Christ.  Of no sacrament is this more true than the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, where the Word made Flesh offers Himself in sacrifice, so that we can join sacramentally in His singular act of salvation.

By embracing Jesus’ cross, we can come to communion with the divine Person of Jesus Christ Himself.  Only through this Cross can the Christian enter the life of the Son, and through the Son the embrace of the Father.  In the order of salvation, this is the providential role of the Word of God.

The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Isaiah 49:3,5-6  +  1 Corinthians 1:1-3  +  John 1:29-34

Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.

Our Scriptures this Sunday help us set our own lives within the grander scheme of things.  That grander scheme is called “Divine Providence”.  One way to describe Divine Providence is to say that it’s what God chooses to do, when He does it, and why He does it.

Divine Providence is at the heart of the Scriptures of Holy Mass during the first several weeks in Ordinary Time.  Following the Season of Christmas, which ended last week with the Baptism of Jesus, we turn to consider our own baptism.

When you were baptized, the promises that were made started a relationship where God is your Lord, and you are His servant.  Or at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be like.  We hear several different examples of this servant-Lord relationship in today’s Scriptures.  Each is a model for us, and the last is also something more.

First, Isaiah was called to serve the Lord as His prophet.  “The Lord said to [Isaiah]:  ‘You are my servant.  …  I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’”  Among all the Old Testament prophets who proclaimed the coming of God’s justice, Isaiah had a unique place.  His calling was to prepare for the coming of a Messiah who offers loving mercy that knows no bounds and that would “reach to the ends of the earth.”  Although none of us has been called to be a prophet like Isaiah, there is something in his vocation that ought to be mirrored in our own vocations:  namely, loving mercy that knows no bounds.

Second, Paul was called to serve the Lord as His apostle.  Today’s Second Reading is simply the first three verses of a letter written by Saint Paul:  it’s not the longest of his letters, but it’s one of the more profound.  His self-introduction focuses upon his calling as an “apostle”, which literally means “one who is sent”.  He describes himself this way:  “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”.

Paul was sent “by the will of God” to spread the Messiah’s Gospel to the Gentiles, the very people that Isaiah had served by preparing them for the Messiah.  Although none of us has been called to be an apostle like Paul, there is something in his vocation that ought to be mirrored in our own vocations:  namely, serving as “one who is sent”.

That Messiah whose coming Isaiah proclaimed, and whom Paul was sent forth to preach about, is of course Jesus.  Jesus, like Isaiah and Paul, was called by God to serve.  Yet Jesus is not only an example for us, as are Isaiah and Paul.

Jesus was called by God the Father to serve as the Savior of mankind.  We hear about this call within today’s Gospel Reading.  This call connects to today’s Responsorial Psalm, and especially its refrain.  The refrain can help you rest in God’s Divine Providence, instead of wrestling against it.

“Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.”  Although the word “I” appears twice in this single verse, it’s not the focus of the verse.  The focus is God’s Providential Will and one’s submission to it:  that is, one’s willingness to be His servant.  Most of us, when we pray, actually speak to God as if He’s our servant:  in effect saying, “Here I am, Lord; now come and do my will.”

One of the chief ways that Christians experience God’s Providential Will is unanswered prayers.  In fact, these are often God’s gifts to us, whether we acknowledge them as such or not.  Tragically, some Christians stop following Jesus because their prayers aren’t answered as they want.  But silence on God’s part can be His way of demanding patience and perseverance.  This silence clarifies what’s important to God for the unfolding of His Providential Will.

Yet whether in accepting God’s silence or in moving forward to carry out His Will, we need to recognize a distinction.  Not only are we to imitate Jesus in His example of doing His Father’s Will in all things.  As Christians, we are meant to live in Christ.

We are not meant to live “in Isaiah” or “in Paul”, as much as we ought to follow their respective examples.  But each of us is meant to live “in Christ”.  This is not something that the Christian can accomplish through human effort or good works.  Only God can accomplish this.  His chief means for doing so are the Sacraments and grace given within personal prayer.  For our part, we need to work at disposing ourselves for reception of these divine gifts.  God’s gifts allow Christ to live in us, and allow Christ to say through us:  “Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.”

The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
II Samuel 12:7-10,13  +  Galatians 2:16, 19-21  +  Luke 7:36—8:3

Summer is a time for activity and travel.  In the midst of so much of nature—the great outdoors—that we get to enjoy during these months, it’s easy to overlook the great “indoors”:  not the inside of our homes and campers, but rather, the inside of our souls.  In the midst of so much natural beauty, we need to spend time admiring and cultivating the supernatural beauty of the Christian spiritual life.  A large part of this beauty emerges through Christian prayer.

What is prayer?  St. Thérèse the Little Flower simply said this:  “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”[1]  Despite her simplicity, the Little Flower packed a lot of truth into that single description.  But consider just one part of her description of prayer:  that part in which she says, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart”.

Prayer is not something abstract, but something personal.  It’s not something that the Little Flower has heard about, like an exotic animal that lives only in some far-away country in Asia.  This is something she’s experienced—not only first-hand—but within her.  That’s why she uses the metaphor of the “heart” in describing prayer.

June is the month especially dedicated by the Church to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Throughout this month the Church encourages devotions to the Sacred Heart.  The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart almost always falls within June, unless Easter occurs very early in the year.[2]  The human heart—whether your own, or Jesus’—is one of the chief metaphors that the Church uses in describing prayer.  Perhaps very few of us have ever seen a human heart in person (as opposed to on TV).  And unless you work in the medical field, you’ve probably never seen a beating human heart in person.  Nonetheless, the living, beating human heart is something that everyone of us can understand because everyone of us has such a thing!  We can even feel it at work if we quiet our self, and hold our hand against our heart.

The human heart is central to our natural lives.  Similarly, our heart—spiritually speaking—is central to our supernatural lives.  Regarding that supernatural life, it’s true that Scripture “speaks sometimes of the soul or the spirit” as its center, “but most often [Scripture speaks] of the heart (more than a thousand times).  According to Scripture, it is the heart that prays.  If our heart is far from God, the words of prayer are in vain.”[3]  The question that sometimes leads us to fall away from prayer, or even at times to despair of prayer, is how—if our hearts are far from God—can that gap be bridged?

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In our Christian understanding of God, man, and man’s search for God, one of the most important truths is that “God calls man first.  Man may forget his Creator[,] or hide far from His face; he may run after idols or accuse [God] of having abandoned him; [nonetheless,] the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer.[4]

“In prayer, … God’s initiative of love always comes first; our own first step is always a response.”[5]  Seeing this fact helps us return to the Little Flower’s description of prayer as “a surge of the heart.”  That surge begins with God.  God speaks within our heart, and moves our heart from within, because He created our heart along with all the rest of us.

God always takes the initiative.  One of the most beautiful verses in Scripture highlights this primacy of God.  St. John, the evangelist and Beloved Disciple, wrote in his first epistle about the God who “is love”.[6]  St. John said that “In this is love:  not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us, and sent His Son as an expiation for our sins.”[7]  God’s primacy—His initiative—colors every aspect of our spiritual life as Christians, and certainly the part of the spiritual life that we call prayer.  Unfortunately, even though God always takes the first step, we often fail to take the second.  Our readings today show us a major reason for this.

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In today’s First Reading we hear of a confrontation.  At one end is King David.  He’s one of the most dramatic figures in the Old Testament, and he’s one of the figures with whom we find it easiest to relate because he’s such a bundle of contradictions.  He’s a person of strength, and he’s called by God to greatness, but he’s also a great sinner, and the consequences of his sins constantly run roughshod over his vocation.

The confrontation in today’s First Reading is between David and God, although Nathan is God’s prophet and it’s Nathan who confronts David on God’s behalf.  Nathan doesn’t pull any punches.  To illustrate just how sinfully David has acted, Nathan contrasts—on the one hand—the lofty vocation to which God had called David, with—on the other hand—David’s sinful response to God’s grace.  God basically says through Nathan, “Look, David, I called you to the office of King of Israel.  I gave you great power so that you could shepherd my flock.  And what did you do with that power?  Because you lusted after Bathsheba, you sent your military officer Uriah the Hittite to the front lines of battle, and then ordered that the rest of your troops quickly pull back, so that Uriah would be surrounded by enemy forces and killed, so that you could take his wife as your own.”

Now, the biblical author’s record of King David’s response is meager.  The author of Second Kings only records David as replying with six very plain words:  “I have sinned against the Lord.”  Nonetheless, the context of this passage, much of which comes in the verses following our First Reading, make clear the depth of David’s contrition, sorrow, and remorse.  Another book of the Old Testament also gives us some context for David’s very plain response.

King David is traditionally considered the composer of the Book of Psalms.  He’s referred to as the book’s “composer” instead of as its “author” because, of course, the Psalms are songs, and were so from the beginning.  David composed not just the words of the psalms, but their music, also (although his original music has been lost to history).  Regardless, the point is that we can listen to any one of the 150 psalms and hear David speak his mind.

Today’s Responsorial Psalm fleshes out that very plain response of David to Nathan in the First Reading.  Today’s Responsorial Psalm is selected verses from Psalm 32.  The refrain:  “Lord, forgive the wrong I have done.”  As we hear the verses of this psalm, we can begin t0 see what was in David’s heart as he said before Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”  When Nathan confronted David with his sins of murder and adultery, David recognized that he had wounded his own soul by his sins, and needed the Lord to forgive the wrong he had done.

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Your sins weaken the powers of your soul, just as surely as a disease of the lungs affects your power to breath, which in turn affects the power of all the parts of your body to be nourished by the air around you.  One of the powers of your soul that’s weakened by your sins is your ability to pray, with all the consequences that that entails in your spiritual life.  Although it’s true that God always takes the initiative in our spiritual lives, including in our prayer, we often cannot perceive God at work in our hearts, because our sins weaken and even harden the human heart.  Sin doesn’t weaken our ability to jabber away at God, but it does weaken our ability to hear Him, and if prayer on our end is supposed to be a response to God, we can be sure that if we’re not hearing Him to begin with, then whatever we may be saying, “the words of prayer are in vain.”[8]

This is where you’re challenged to choose sides in the midst of another confrontation:  the confrontation in today’s Gospel passage.  While in the First Reading the conflict is among David, Nathan, and the Lord, in the Gospel Reading the conflict is among the “sinful woman”, Simon the Pharisee, and the Lord Jesus.  However, there’s a profound difference between the two conflicts.  In the Old Testament, the Lord uses the prophet to bring the sinner to Him.  In the New Testament, the Lord uses the sinner to try to bring the Pharisee to Him.  For your own spiritual life, to draw from this Gospel passage, you have to put yourself in the sandals of this sinful woman.

Until we look seriously at our sins, at their effects on our souls, and at their consequences (for ourselves and for others, both in this world and in the next), our experience of prayer will be diminished, and so therefore will the benefits of our prayer.  Too often in our prayer we’re like Simon the Pharisee instead of being like the sinful woman.  The Pharisee says to himself, “If [Jesus] were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”  By contrast, the sinful woman says nothing, but she acts with great love.  The Pharisee speaks to himself with doubt about whether Jesus is even a prophet.  But the woman acts with love towards Jesus, because she knows through faith that He is the Messiah who wants to wash away her sins.

If we wanted to sum up today’s Gospel passage, we could take away from church this weekend just those two sentences that Jesus proclaims to Simon:  “her many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love.  But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  In those words Jesus teaches us about the virtue of humility, which is the beginning of a fruitful prayer life, and through that prayer the beginning of the contentment and peace of mind that remain elusive until we remain in God.

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[1] St. Thérèse of Lisieux, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) #2558.

[2] The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus fell during May in A.D. 2008.

[3] CCC #2562.

[4] CCC #2567.

[5] Ibid.

[6] 1 John 4:8.

[7] 1 John 4:10.

[8] CCC #2562.

The Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Zechariah 12:10-11  +  Galatians 3:26-29  +  Luke 9:18-24

“Deny your self / and take up your cross daily / and follow me.”

That’s what our Savior Jesus Christ says that you must do in order to be His disciple.  He’s very straightforward.  There are only three things.  Deny your self.  Take up your cross daily.  Follow Jesus.

One difficulty in letting these words sink deep into our hearts is that these three can seem interchangeable.  We might say to our self, “Isn’t ‘taking up your cross daily’ the same thing as ‘following Jesus’?  Isn’t ‘denying your self’ the same thing as ‘taking up your cross’?”  And so on.  It takes an intentional act on our part to stop, listen to, and make our own the words of Holy Scripture.  That’s why at least once every five years, each adult Catholic ought to commit herself or himself to a study of Scripture, whether that’s with a group in one’s parish, or for those who are self-starters, an individual study of a particular book of the Bible, or a particular group of books, like the letters of Saint John the Evangelist.

Deny your self.  Take up your cross daily.  Follow Jesus.  While these three are pieces that join to form a whole, they’re not interchangeable.  Each makes different demands of you, and requires a different spiritual skill-set, as it were.

Consider the first command that Jesus lays at your feet today.  “Deny your self.”  What does the word “deny” mean?  Another word for “denial” is “renunciation”.  Both words are clearly negative, which lends itself to a common criticism of Catholicism:  namely, that Catholicism bears a strand of pessimism or gloominess.  That’s why some non-Catholics look with suspicion on practices such as hanging a crucifix in one’s home, or praying the Stations of the Cross.

So what’s the reason for the Church’s insistence on negative practices such as “denial” and “renunciation”?  In grade school math, we were taught that the negative of a negative is a positive.  “Negative two” times “negative two” equals “positive four”.  So while it’s true that denial and renunciation are negative practices, their purpose in the Catholic Faith is to reverse course on the negative effects of Original Sin.  In one word, these effects can be summed up as “selfishness”, but the saints who became masters of the Christian moral life and prayer life realized that selfishness comes in many different forms, such as pride, wrath, greed, sloth, lust, envy, and gluttony.  So to “deny your self” means to deny your “fallen self”, the false self that results from allowing the effects of Original Sin to coalesce into personal sins, which over time can harden into vices. 

The negative of a negative is a positive, and so when we practice self-denial in order to root out moral vices, we till the good soil of our soul for God to water with His grace.  Through God’s grace and our efforts, the Image of God can come to the fore in our soul.  To the Image of God can be joined a likeness to God.  Virtues can result, leading to the summit of virtue:  a life lived in divine charity, both on earth and in Heaven.  This is why we deny our self.

Consider, then, the second command that Jesus lays at your feet today.  “Take up your cross daily.”  How is this command different than the command to “deny your self”?  Both seem negative, but each has its own aim.  The second is really the aim of the first.  The first prepares for the second.  If self-denial is pulling the weeds from your soul, then taking up your cross is planting and cultivating the seeds that will bloom there.  Or consider an analogy to athletics.  Both the months of training and the day of competition are very difficult.  Both demand much that’s negative:  training involves strenuous workouts, and competition involves tension and anticipation of the opponent’s moves.  But the difference is that the practice prepares for the competition, and in the same way, denying our self is rooting out the weaknesses in our soul, in order that we can take up the cross.

But the competition that we enter as Christians is not just on Friday, or just for a season.  Jesus reminds us that taking up our cross is a daily event.  That means it’s with us when we wake up, whether we want it to be there or not.  We can’t call in sick (or if we do, we should do so by going to confession for healing).  “Take up your cross daily.”  Some days, of course, the burden weighs heavier than others.  Part of the burden can come from the form that our cross takes.  Sometimes its form changes with the circumstances of our lives.  Regardless, in the midst of carrying our cross each day, and especially on the days it’s so difficult, we need to recall why.  We need to recall why we deny our self, and why we take up our cross daily.

Consider, then, the third command that Jesus lays at your feet today.  “Follow me.”  I hope that those are the first words you hear every morning when you wake up.  These are words of encouragement and promise.  One way to imagine the meaning of these words is to picture the Fifth Station of the Cross, where Simon of Cyrene walks with Jesus up Calvary, bearing the cross of mankind.  This is one way to picture what Jesus is commanding us in today’s Gospel.  We are helping Jesus.  We are struggling daily alongside Jesus.  The company of Jesus, even in the midst of trial, brings far more lasting peace than anything that the comforts of this world can give.  Jesus is the best company we can have in this world.

It’s for the sake of Jesus’ company, in this world and the next, that we bear everything we bear in this world.  You’re familiar with the modern poem titled, “Footprints in the Sand”.  What this poem drives at is Jesus’ company through thick and thin.  Jesus is there, even if we are not present to Him, or even aware of His Presence next to us, or bearing us in His arms.  “I would never leave you,” Jesus says to us on those days when carrying our cross seems difficult.  “During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

In our Catholic Faith, the more religious word for “company” is “communion”.  Being in communion with Jesus, with His Church, and with all the members of the Church, requires grace even more than our efforts (those our efforts are necessary).  It’s in order to help our unbelief, so that we might believe more, that Christ gives us His Body and Blood as true food.  This Holy Communion strengthens us for the seven days that now lay before us in the world, before the Lord calls us to His altar again.  We give thanks for having a God who is gracious, who understands our many weaknesses, and who loves us enough to sacrifice His life for us, so that each day we can find meaning in our own sacrifices.