Saturday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Baruch 4:5-12,27-29  +  Luke 10:17-24
October 5, 2019

… I have seen the captivity that the Eternal God has brought upon my sons and daughters.

Saturday is dedicated by the Church to our Blessed Mother.  From the many persons and places in the Old Testament which foreshadow Mary, today’s First Reading presents one:  the city Jerusalem.  We might wonder how a city can represent a person, or vice versa.  In this case, one link between the two is that both are mothers.  In today’s First Reading, this mother speaks to her children.

In our modern culture, we might find it strange to think of a city as a mother, but this was (and still is) a common idea in older cultures.  In our own modern Western culture, the mobility of families makes this idea harder to see.  But in cultures where many persons are born, grow, live and die in the same city or town, the words of today’s First Reading are easier to grasp.  For them it’s easier to see one’s “hometown” as a mother, shaping one’s life and identity.

“I have seen the captivity that the Eternal God has brought upon my sons and daughters.”  We can take these words of Jerusalem and place them instead on the lips of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  She continues, “Fear not, my children; call out to God!  He who brought this upon you will remember you.”  Through these words Jerusalem foreshadows the compassion of Our Blessed Mother.  We can picture her on Calvary as described in the Gospel account of the Beloved Disciple, who was himself entrusted to her care by Jesus:  “Woman, behold your son” [John 19:26].  One difference we notice between Jerusalem and Mary is the relationship of the mother to “the Eternal God” to whom her children “call out”.  Our Blessed Lady is the Mother of God, having given birth to the Word made Flesh:  He who through her fidelity has taken on our sinful flesh.

St. Francis of Assisi
Baruch 1:15-22  +  Luke 10:13-16
October 4, 2019

“Woe to you, Chorazin!  Woe to you, Bethsaida!”

Jesus never says, “Woe is me!”  Not once in the four accounts of the Gospel does Jesus ever say such a thing.  However, more than a few times Jesus expresses woe.  He expresses these woes regarding those who do not listen, and do not follow, the Word of God.

We might wonder what emotions Jesus experienced as He pronounced the woes in today’s Gospel passage.  He had just reasons to be angry, as well as frustrated.  Nonetheless, regardless of which emotions might have been running through His mind and heart, we know that Jesus had compassion for those He was preaching against.

In fact, to say that Jesus in pronouncing these woes was preaching against the people of these cities would call for a qualification.  In preaching woes against the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida, Jesus was preaching for them.  Does that sound like a contradiction?  It’s no more of a contradiction than is a father who disciplines his child.  Everything that Jesus did during His earthly life, including the overturning of the money changers’ tables, and the preaching of woes against the unfaithful, was for the sake of those in spiritual danger, to bring them back from a precipice into the arms of a loving Father.

Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Nehemiah 8:1-4,5-6,7-12  +  Luke 10:1-12
October 3, 2019

   “I am sending you like lambs among wolves.”   

The Church often quotes verses from today’s Gospel passage in her promotion of vocations.  However, these seventy-two to whom Jesus speaks are appointed and sent for a specific reason.  They are sent “ahead of” Jesus, not in His name or in His person.  They are sent “in pairs to every town and place He intended to visit.”  They are “advance teams”, if you will.  In the general sense in which they are sent ahead of Jesus, we can consider these 72 as symbolizing all baptized Christians.  What Jesus says to them speaks today to each of us Christians.

Jesus offers many brief sayings in today’s Gospel passage.  All are loosely joined together.  Many can be singled out and meditated upon for a long period of time.  Take this proclamation of the Lord:  “behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.”  It’s not difficult for a Christian disciple to use these words as a justification for self-righteousness in the face of any opposition, justified or not.  Nonetheless, that possibility doesn’t nullify the meaning of Jesus’ words.  At our best, we disciples are “lambs among wolves”.  We might wonder, if that’s our best, then what’s the worst?

While each Christian might be tempted to turn away from the “vocation” to be a lamb, perhaps we can take solace in two simple Gospel truths.  Our Lord and Savior is the Good Shepherd [John 10:11] as well as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world [John 1:29].

The Holy Guardian Angels
Nehemiah 2:1-8  +  Matthew 18:1-5,10
October 2, 2019

   “…their angels in Heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”   

Our Guardian Angels shed light upon the path that we must walk.  When our struggles each day seem too great, they extend a ray of hope down upon us from God.  They allow us to see the face of Our Crucified and Risen Lord, who having shared in our suffering helps us share in His Resurrection, even in the midst of suffering.

Our Guardian Angels guard us from the snares of our enemies.  As the Devil tries time and again to convince us that his way—easier and broader than God’s—is the way that will bring us happiness, our guardians remind us that the Way of the Cross is the only path to the Father.

Our Guardian Angels rule us as we slip from the narrow path.  As we fall prey to the temptations of the Devil, our guardians do not abandon us.  Sharing in the boundless love of our Savior, they do not fail to stand by us even then.  They convince us, as they nurse our consciences back to health, that the Cross is the only true remedy for our constant falling away from God.

Our Guardian Angels guide us by bidding us to share in the sacraments of the Church.  For all their power, our guardians entrust us to the care of Holy Mother Church, since in her care we most truly belong.  For the Church is their Mother, too.  All the angels are fellow members of the Church, and as the Church’s children we imitate the words of Jesus when like little children we recognize and thank those who are our guardians.

St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Virgin
Zechariah 8:20-23  +  Luke 9:51-56
October 1, 2019

   He resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem….   

Jesus sets out for Jerusalem.  The name “Jerusalem” literally means “city of peace”.  It’s there that Jesus will be condemned to death for our sins, and from there led to Calvary, a hill just outside the city limits.  Calvary is the only way that leads to our destination:  the Father’s city of eternal peace, the heavenly Jerusalem.

As Jesus heads resolutely to Jerusalem, the City of Peace, He knows that His vocation is to bring peace to each human person.  Peace is often, unfortunately, not commonplace in our earthly lives.  You and I may not face the sort of persecution that the martyrs faced, but we never seem to have peace as we would wish.  Nonetheless, Jesus at the Last Supper said, “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you”.  So where is this peace in our lives?

Every day God calls us to follow Him.  If we worthily receive the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus in the Eucharist, He will strengthen us at every “now” of daily life.  He wants us to accept the spiritual strength we need to cultivate the virtues of human life.  These virtues allow the flourishing and flowering of authentic peace in our lives.

Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Virgin & Doctor of the Church

St. Jerome, Priest & Doctor of the Church
Zechariah 8:1-8  + Luke 9:46-50
September 30, 2019

   “Whoever receives this child in My Name receives Me….”   

During Christmastide we are used to thinking of Jesus—the divine Word made Flesh—dwelling among us as an infant.  But today, near the start of Autumn, Jesus counsels us to receive Him as a child.  Clearly, then, spiritual childhood isn’t just for Christmas!

To receive Jesus as a child means that the one who receives Jesus becomes a child him- or herself.

Spiritual childhood is a common theme in the literature of the Catholic masters of spirituality.  Of course, pondering this theme first requires a distinction between the childhood of fallen human nature and the childhood of what we might call either the “original human nature” or the “redeemed human nature”.  What does this distinction mean concretely?  We can picture this distinction by comparing two different images:  on the one hand is a two-year-old who refuses to go to sleep; on the other is the child nursing peacefully with his mother.

In addition to what Jesus says in today’s Gospel passage, we can use a Scriptural image to help us picture the spiritual childhood to which the Christian is called.  We consider Calvary, and Jesus entrusting Mary and the Beloved Disciple to each other’s care.  This Beloved Disciple, child of Mary, is our icon for spiritual childhood.

St. Jerome, Priest & Doctor of the Church

The 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Am 6:1,4-7  +  1 Tim 6:11-16  +  Lk 16:19-31
September 29, 2019

“When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.”

As we gaze on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, if we only look at the two title characters, we miss something important.  We miss the Rich Man’s five brothers.  Turn your attention to these five brothers, and—just for a moment—away from the mercy for which Lazarus and the Rich Man beg.

We know very little about these five brothers.  We could presume that these five are like their brother in wearing fine clothing and dining sumptuously.  But we’re not told that outright.  The only details that we hear are that they’re still on earth, and that they need to repent.  Their brother in the netherworld tells us these two facts.

We see, then, that these five brothers represent us.  When Jesus first preached this parable, He was speaking to the Pharisees.  Jesus meant for the Pharisees to see themselves in those five brothers.  Yet like the Pharisees, you and I need to repent, and still have time on earth to do so.

The Rich Man failed to care for Lazarus during their earthly lives.  Jesus makes clear through this parable that both those in real need—such as Lazarus—and those who neglect the needy—such as the Rich Man—meet with God’s justice after death.  Lazarus is “carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham”, while the Rich Man in “the netherworld [is] in torment”.

Here we see how Jesus’ parable drives our focus towards the Rich Man’s five brothers still on earth.  It’s commendable that the Rich Man while in eternal torment would have such a selfless thought:  not wanting his brothers to end up like him.  Nonetheless, Jesus’ point is not the Rich Man’s selflessness after death, but the pointlessness of the Rich Man’s good deed.  The five brothers already have “Moses and the prophets”.  They have what they need to direct their lives towards Heaven, but their lives are still empty, because they don’t recognize their need to give.

God has built into your heart—into your “spiritual DNA”, if you will—this need to give.  This need to give lay dormant in the heart of the Rich Man in Jesus’ parable.  The need to give pulsed in his heart as he dressed finely and dined sumptuously each day.  This need to give is just as real as your need for healthful food, your need for clothing and shelter, and your need for rest.

The difficulty in the Rich Man’s life is that he allowed his needs to be shaped by his wants.  The Rich Man had an authentic need for food and drink, just as you and I, and Jesus and Mary and the saints, and every human being has.  This need is built into us by God in order to serve the physical needs of our bodies, so that through healthy bodies, we as persons can serve the needs of other persons.  This need is not there in order to be tickled by the tasty and the tempting.

The need for food and drink is very simple.  But we often change it into something that God did not design it to be.  That’s not to say that there’s something wrong with—for example—Thanksgiving dinners, or a dinner celebrating a wedding or a First Holy Communion.  But there is something wrong when one dines “sumptuously each day”:  when the tasty and tempting are one’s “daily bread”.

When we are complacent like the persons that Amos is preaching against in the First Reading—when we allow our needs to be shaped by our wants—we become tired and weak.  If we are weak and tired then it’s not possible to fill the bill that Saint Paul describes in the Second Reading.  St. Paul is preaching to his disciple Timothy when he encourages Timothy to live for God and neighbor, and not for himself.

Likewise, just as Moses, the prophets, and even a dead man rising to life again could not help the Rich Man’s brothers until they recognized their need to give, so all the gifts in our lives cannot help us reach Heaven until we recognize our need to give them away.

+     +     +

click HERE to watch Jeff Cavins’ reflection for this liturgical Sunday (4:16)

click HERE to read the homily of Monsignor Charles Pope for this Sunday

click HERE to watch the homily of Archbishop Charles Chaput for this Sunday

+     +     +

click HERE to read Pope Francis’ 2016 homily for this Sunday

click HERE to read Pope Emeritus Benedict’s 2010 Angelus address for this Sunday

click HERE to read St. John Paul II’s 2004 Angelus address for this Sunday

Saturday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Zechariah 2:5-9,14-15  +  Luke 9:43-45
September 28, 2019

   “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.”   

Today’s Gospel passage, from fairly early in Luke’s Gospel account (in chapter 9 of 24 chapters), helps us to focus squarely on Jesus, even if His words here confuse the disciples.  You and I have the advantage of hindsight, of course, in knowing “the rest of the story” of the Gospel.  We know perfectly well what Jesus is referring to when He predicts that the “Son of Man is to be handed over to men.”

Still, we shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back for being unlike the disciples portrayed today.  Consider the setting of today’s Gospel passage.  We need to recognize Jesus’ deliberateness in choosing the moment that He did to speak the words that He did:  it was “[w]hile they were all amazed at His every deed” that Jesus foretold His Passion.

What is the relationship between these two:  Jesus’ amazing deeds and His Passion?  Did Jesus foretell His Passion when He did to bring the disciples back down to earth, similar to the occasion of His Transfiguration?  Was Jesus wanting to minimize the significance of His amazing deeds, or at least to help the disciples realize that they were not the ultimate reason for His presence in their midst?  Reflect on these questions in the light of your own desire for God to work amazing deeds in your life, and your reluctance to share in the “handing over” of Jesus that He foretells today.

St. Vincent de Paul, Priest
Haggai 2:1-9  +  Luke 9:18-22
September 27, 2019

   Jesus was praying in solitude, and the disciples were with him.   

The first sentence of today’s Gospel passage shouldn’t be overlooked.  “Jesus was praying in solitude, and the disciples were with him.”  This might seem like an odd statement, perhaps even contradictory.  But from the larger canvas on which all four Gospel accounts are drawn, we see several times a portrait of Jesus as one who prays intensely, at length, in solitude, and often.  That His disciples were with Him doesn’t mean that they were all engaged in prayer together, but that they had the occasion to witness Jesus in this intense, solitary prayer with His Father.

The point of this first sentence within the context of today’s Gospel passage, however, is heard in what Jesus says next.  “Who do the crowds say that I am?”  After they offer the view of the crowds, Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?”  After they give their own view, Jesus offers His view of His own identity.  This portrait of Himself as the “Suffering Servant” who will be raised on the third day was most likely the content of His prayer moments earlier.  There is no doubt about Jesus accepting this call from the Father.  But the disciples’ reactions show that most of them could not accept Jesus in His suffering, or in their own suffering as His disciples.  We might make an examination of conscience, asking if we ourselves are like these disciples.