The Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Isaiah 55:6-9  +  Philippians 1:20-24,27  +  Matthew 20:1-16

I am caught between the two.

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references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this Sunday by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 210-211: God of mercy and piety
CCC 588-589: Jesus identifies his compassion to sinners with God’s

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Saint Paul is talking about a tension that all of us feel.  “I am caught between the two”, Saint Paul writes to the Philippian people.  He’s wrestling with whether it’s better to live down here on earth, or to live in heaven.

Saint Paul is very straightforward:  “I do not know which I shall choose.  I am caught between the two.”  So if it’s hard for a saint to choose between this world and the next, we shouldn’t be surprised if we’re torn, also.

If Jesus appeared before you tomorrow morning and told you that at that moment He would take you up to Heaven, would you go with Him?  Or would you choose to remain on earth?   All of us feel such tension, yet it’s important to note that the reasons for this tension differ among various persons.

St. Paul’s reason for being torn between Heaven and earth is different than the reasons that some of us have.  If you’re a Kenny Chesney fan, you’re familiar with his song called “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven.”  One version of the refrain goes:  “Everybody wants to go to heaven / Get their wings and fly around / Everybody want to go to heaven / But nobody want to go now.”  To explain why this is the case, the singer tells how after church one Sunday he told his pastor:  “Next time you got the good Lord’s ear / Say I’m comin’ but there ain’t no hurry / I’m havin’ fun down here.”

St. Paul wouldn’t have been singing this song extolling “the good life” as he walked down the country roads to preach.  Instead, his aim was to form what today are called intentional disciples.  Saint Paul explains in the Second Reading:  “I am caught between the two.  I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better.  Yet that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for your benefit.”  In other words, there are two competing goods:  two good things, both better than “the good life”.

Clearly, Paul has been laying out his own struggle before the Philippians to give them an example.  By describing this struggle in his own life, he indirectly asks the Philippians, “Do you ever feel like there’s no meaning to this world, that you’d be better off elsewhere?  Do you ever wonder why you’re still here on earth?”

Then in the Second Reading’s last verse he starts to offer an answer:  “… conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ.”  There is only one Way.  There is only one way that gives abiding meaning to this world:  the way of self-sacrifice.  This way means living for others instead of for oneself.  When we realize this in our own lives, the tension between living in Heaven and living on earth clears.

Such clarity emerges also from Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel Reading:  “the last will be first, and the first will be last.”   Saint Paul teaches us to live our lives for others, instead of for ourselves.  But Jesus through this parable clarifies who these others are.

Jesus’ parable is literally about an employee paying his employees.  Yet the point of the parable is not economics, but mercy and love.  At its end, when the landowner rhetorically asks, “am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?”, we understand that this character represents God the Father, who asks each of us, “am I not free to do as I wish with my own love and mercy?”

Each of us gripes and complains just like the laborers in this parable.  We cannot understand why others should receive blessings in their lives when they don’t seem to deserve them.

But God calls us Christians to do something profound.  He calls us not only to be happy for others when they receive blessings.  Our Lord asks us to be the one who bestows blessings on those who don’t seem to deserve them.  Our Lord asks us to imitate that landowner:  to extend blessings to others, not because of how deserving they may or may not be, but to share in the Lord’s work of bestowing undeserved blessings upon our fellow fallen man.

From a Byzantine Gospel – 11th century (Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
1 Corinthians 15:1-11  +  Luke 7:36-50
September 17, 2020

“So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love.”

In today’s Gospel passage we witness a conflict among the “sinful woman”, Simon the Pharisee, and Jesus.  In this passage, the Lord uses the sinner’s situation 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 ponder 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 two lessons.  First, the virtue of humility is the beginning of a fruitful prayer life.  Second, through that fruitful prayer the Christian finds the start of the contentment and peace of mind that remain elusive until we remain in God.

Wednesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 7:31-35

“But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

Our society today is knowledge-rich but wisdom-poor.  Contrast knowledge and wisdom.

Knowledge today, as it’s commonly considered, is thought to be facts and figures.  Computers can put human persons to shame when it comes to sorting, categorizing and presenting information.  While we might dispute whether facts and figures are the essence of knowledge or merely some of its components, we often educate our children according to knowledge-based systems.

What would it mean instead to educate children, and to re-form adults, according to a pattern of wisdom instead?  Jesus in today’s Gospel passage hints that “wisdom is vindicated by all her children”.  These curious words suggest that wisdom “educates” not according to a knowledge-based system, but according to a person-based system.  Jesus teaches us that wisdom bears children; it doesn’t spit out data.  Wisdom can only be understood according to a personalistic view of human life, the Gospel, and the eternal life to which Jesus wants to lead us.  It’s wise for us to follow Him.

Our Lady of Sorrows
1 Corinthians 12:12-14,27-31  +  John 19:25-27
September 15, 2020

“Woman, behold, your son.”

All our joys, all our sorrows, all our glory is only found in Christ:  that is to say, because we are members of Christ’s Body.  It is not true that you have your cross, and I have mine.  We all bear together—as individual members of Christ’s Body—the Cross of Jesus.  We all share in carrying His Cross.

Humanly speaking, sorrows tend to divide people more than joy or glory.  Loneliness and isolation are keenly felt by those who suffer.  Only in Christian faith can we find meaning even in the midst of suffering, because only God—who created everything out of nothing—can create good out of evil.

By approaching the Cross, we find Our Mother of Sorrows standing at its foot.  When we approach the Cross to take it up each day, she is there.  She remains there—at the heart of our Christian faith—to show us with a mother’s love that suffering cannot tear us from each other.

Our Lord Jesus taught us to pray the “Our Father”.  Jesus was not only teaching us that we have a Father in Heaven, because as a consequence of that truth, it’s also true that we are all brothers and sisters.  So then, it’s also true that Mary is the Mother of all of us.  We ask Our Lady of Sorrows, the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, to pray for us in all things.  Through her intercession, she helps us know that no matter what we face in life, her Son is there with us, showing us how to walk the only Way that leads to Heaven.

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Numbers 21:4-9  +  Philippians 2:6-11  +  John 3:13-17
September 14, 2020

… He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

We know that silence can be deafening.  Sometimes silence is very embarrassing, as when a teacher asks a question about something that’s been studied for weeks, and no one knows the answer.

On the other hand, silence can be a very good thing.  It is in silence that the highest kind of prayer happens.  St. John of the Cross is supposed to have said that silence is God’s native language.  Regardless, there are many different ways to pray.  One of the first ways that we learn is prayers that others teach us, like the “Our Father”, the “Hail Mary” and the “Glory Be”.  Prayers like these let us pray together as a group, so that we’re praying the same thing at the same time.

Other times, though, we pray on our own, and so we make up our own words in prayer.  In this kind of prayer—which is like a conversation with God—we can say anything we want.  We don’t have to remember the right words to pray.  We just pray from our heart, and offer to God whatever is most on our mind.

But there’s another part of prayer that sometimes gets overlooked.  That is silence.  Actually, in our prayer, most of our time should be spent listening rather than speaking.  As the saying goes, this is why God gave each of us two ears, but only one mouth:  we are to listen twice as much as we talk.  This is as true of prayer as it of conversations with our fellow human beings.

It is in our silence—in listening to God—that our deepest prayer can take place.  This makes sense, if we think of it, because after all, isn’t what God wants to say to us probably more important than what we want to say to Him?

Humility is one of the virtues, and silence is one form of humility.  That’s why it’s often difficult to quiet ourselves down.  When we’re forced to be silent, we usually want to talk instead.

Even though we have lots of opportunity to grow in humility, as human beings our greatest call to be humble is when we face death:  the deaths of others whom we love, but eventually, our own death.  This is where Christ reveals to us God’s love.  This is what we celebrate today, on the Feast of the Triumph (or Exaltation) of the Holy Cross.

Picture in your mind the scene at Calvary.  Saint John was the only apostle who stood at the foot of the Cross in silence, and it was into his care that Christ, the only child of Mary, entrusted His Blessed Mother.  In turn, Christ entrusted John to the care of Mary.  In these words we hear the only teaching that is possible from the Cross:  that we must entrust ourselves to each other’s care, bound to each other by Our Father’s love.

Saturday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time [II]
1 Corinthians 10:14-22  +  Luke 6:43-49
September 12, 2020

My beloved ones, avoid idolatry.

In today’s First Reading Saint Paul poses a juxtaposition that might at first seem odd.  He bids his beloved to “avoid idolatry”.  That certainly seems like a command to be found in Scripture.  But then he begins speaking about the Eucharist.  He rhetorically asks whether the Eucharist is indeed “a participation in the Blood of Christ” and the “Body of Christ”.  Why is he setting the offering of idolatry directly against the Eucharist?  What, practically, is St. Paul trying to get across to us?

Both idolatry and the Eucharist, of course, are offerings.  On the one hand, idolatrous offerings are made to “false gods”, some of whom do not exist, and some of whom are no more than created demons.  Such sacrifice is in vain inasmuch as religious offering are meant to pay honor or ask pardon from one to whom such offerings are due.

On the other hand, the Eucharist is offered to the Lord, the only and true God.  But that’s not the only difference.  The one true God became man, so as to be able to share in the act of sacrifice:  to offer His own Body and Blood, soul and divinity.  Demons only accept sacrifice from others; they will not descend to sacrifice of themselves.  In the Eucharist, the God-man gives us the very strength needed to share in the sacrifice of self.

Friday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time [II]
1 Corinthians 9:16-19,22-27  +  Luke 6:39-42
September 11, 2020

“Remove the wooden beam from your eye first ….”

When you make your nightly examination of conscience, and prepare monthly for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, there’s a simple way to recollect yourself for the needed self-scrutiny.  After all, if it’s been a long day or month, we can feel overwhelmed and unsure how to assess our efforts to live (or our failures to live) in Christ.

This simple means is to recall that all the commandments of the spiritual life converge in Jesus Christ.  What does this mean?  Today’s Gospel passage offers a concrete example.  The imagery with which Jesus preaches today seems only to be about the challenge of loving our neighbor:  specifically, a sinful (“blind”) neighbor.  But the two great commands of Jesus—to love God fully, and to love our neighbor as our self—converge in Him.

We are not to look down on our sinful brother, but rather to look up to him.  This is possible because of our authentic need for humility.  Christian humility is in one sense nothing more than honesty.  Both my brother and I are sinners.  We are equal in this.  But Jesus calls me to serve as brother as if I were serving Jesus Himself.  For this reason, from my state of sinfulness, I look up to my sinful brother.  From this stance, I may help him remove the splinter from his eye.  Jesus, of course, never sinned, but He did “become sin”—in the phrase of St. Paul—so that in my sinful brother I can see the Jesus whom I am to serve.

The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Sirach 27:30—28:7  +  Romans 14:7-9  +  Matthew 18:21-35

Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.

references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this Sunday by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 218-221: God is love
CCC 294: God manifests his glory by sharing his goodness
CCC 2838-2845: “forgive us our trespasses”

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The great British convert and apologist G. K. Chesterton once said, “Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all.”  By contrast, you and I often are willing only to forgive if we deem someone’s sins not too serious or offensive.  Today Jesus challenges us to go further in being instruments of His Divine Mercy.

On this Sunday in the midst of Ordinary Time, we ought to think back to the Sunday after Easter Sunday.  The Church calls this day Divine Mercy Sunday, in honor of Jesus instituting the Sacrament of Confession in the evening following His Resurrection.  The gift of this Sacrament is anything but ordinary.  Yet the fruits of this sacrament are meant to help each Christian face the ordinary challenges of forgiving others as we have been forgiven.

One way to realize to what extent we ought to extend mercy to others is to turn the table.  We ought each day to consider how much God Himself has blessed us in showing us His mercy.  We ought to remember that each day we act sinfully, in a way that calls for God’s mercy.

All of us long to find a place where we are at home, where we are trusted.  But even more importantly, we long to find a place where we can be forgiven, for we know that there are times when we fail to live up to the trust that people place in us.  We might ask ourselves, “Which is more important to me:  trust or forgiveness?”

If we look to our own experiences, it’s easy to answer these questions.  When we consider the workplace, we can hope that our employers or supervisors might be patient and help us when we have trouble with a task.

But if we were to imagine our worst Monday, a day in which hour after hour produced nothing but terrible results, and finally ended in a major blunder or misjudgment, we might naturally expect to receive a pink slip instead of forgiveness.  Businesses have to trust people, or they wouldn’t have any employees.  But they do not have to forgive endlessly.  They can only tolerate a certain amount of error.  After that, the relationship is over.

All of us long to find a place where we feel at home, which first and foremost means a place where we know we can experience forgiveness despite our sins.  We want a home where our relationships are not defined by, or at risk of termination because of, our sins.

Home is not simply where the heart is, but where the forgiving heart is.  The home in which we find the deepest sort of forgiveness, a selfless and generous forgiveness that seeks to build up the one who has transgressed:  this is our truest home.

The Church, wherein we share in the Body of Christ, is our truest home both on earth and in Heaven.  By right, we should feel most at home there, before its altar, because it is there that we revel in the source of all forgiveness.  When the priest speaks those words that Christ spoke at the Last Supper, we are taken into that home where forgiveness was first given by the God-man, when He said, “This is the Cup of My Blood.  It will be shed for you and for all, so that sins may be forgiven ….”

But in this home, we find not only forgiveness.  In our home which is the Church, sharing in the Eucharist means giving thanks not only for the forgiveness wrought by Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross.  We also give thanks for the fact that when we share fully in this sacrament, we receive not only a share in Christ’s forgiveness.  We receive a share in the life of Christ himself.  We receive not only the Forgiver’s forgiveness.  We receive the Forgiver.

To receive forgiveness is to be restored to our former self.  But to receive the Forgiver means not simply that we’re restored to our former self, but that we’re raised from our state of sinfulness even beyond our old self, to a share in the life of the Forgiver’s Self.  We share in the life of Christ, and so are asked to offer forgiveness to others as Christ does:  to all persons, in all circumstances, forever.

Thursday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time [II]
1 Corinthians 8:1-7,11-13  +  Luke 6:27-38
September 10, 2020

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

In today’s Gospel passage Jesus bids us to follow the Golden Rule.  “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  The Golden Rule is heard within the setting of admonitions by which Jesus leads us to share in His Cross:  “Love your enemies.”  “Do good to those who hate you.”  “Pray for those who mistreat you.”  These admonitions are examples of living out on the moral and spiritual planes what Jesus accomplished on the Cross.

We all know that it’s very hard to live out these admonitions.  But it’s good to remember that Jesus is not only our teacher, who set us an example on the Cross.  He is also our Savior, who from the Cross on Good Friday bestows grace upon all who beseech Him as they strive to imitate Him.

In the final part of today’s Gospel passage Jesus offers us some rhetorical questions.  The first is representative:  “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?”  By the questions that follow Jesus leads us to see the Face of His heavenly Father.  When we live the Golden Rule, we will be “children of the Most High”.  Finally, to sum up everything He’s been exhorting us to live, He offers a simple principle that you and I might take and repeat throughout this day whenever there is a quiet moment:  “The measure with which you measure will in return by measured out to you.”