St. Benedict, Abbot
Hosea 10:1-3,7-8,12  +  Matthew 10:1-7
July 11, 2018

“Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Today’s Gospel passage speaks about reaching out to those who are hurt and sick.  We hear Jesus sending his twelve apostles to go out and heal “every disease and every illness.”  More than just a prophet, Jesus has authority not only to call back the repentant to Himself, but also to heal them.

When Jesus sends the apostles, His instructions are for them to go to “the lost sheep of the House of Israel”.  In our own day, there are many fallen-away Catholics, and of course we pray for them.  But we can do more for them than just pray.  With the sort of love that Jesus held in His Sacred Heart when He looked at the crowds and said, “the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few”, we can reach out to those who have fallen away from the Church.

We can offer gentle instructions to those who don’t know how to start again to live the Faith:  to begin again to receive the sacraments, the gifts of grace which come to us through the apostles and their successors.  It’s the bishops’ responsibility—and the responsibility of those priests who work under their bishops—to bring lost sheep back into the fold through the sacraments.  But often, it will be ordinary Christians who point those lost sheep in the right direction.

Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
Hosea 8:4-7,11-13  +  Matthew 9:32-38
July 10, 2018

“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few….”

The cry that we hear Jesus utter in today’s Gospel passage—“the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few”—is one that we usually associate with the need for vocations in the Church.  But Jesus also speaks through these words about the harvest of one’s heart and the fruits of one’s soul.  In each person is a soul created by God, and each soul is capable of being completely filled, as much as it is able:  that is, to be “perfected” by God’s grace.

Unfortunately, this “harvest of the soul” is neglected by so many of us by our actions and our inaction.  We are not willing to believe what the Church teaches about God calling every human person to be a saint.  The Church at the Second Vatican Council spoke strongly about the “universal call to holiness”.

God gives each one of us many gifts, but only when we talk with God and are strengthened by Him do we learn how to use those gifts correctly, in accord with His plan.  Through our prayer, and God’s grace, our minds and wills can be formed, so that we can be more perfectly the saints God wants us to be.

Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
Hosea 2:16,17-18,21-22  +  Matthew 9:18-26
July 9, 2018

“Courage, daughter!  Your faith has saved you.”

In today’s Gospel passage are two people who see how God wants to be in their lives in time of need.  In our day and age, so many people turn to Christ in need.  When we are honest with ourselves, we know that we would like to ask Christ’s help for many things in our lives.  It’s true that petitionary prayer—in which we ask for something from God—is not as selfless a form of prayer as adoration.  But God wants us to present our petitions to Him.

Consider the woman in this Gospel passage.  She had suffered for many years.  She interrupts Christ right in the middle of His trying to help someone else.  We should make that woman’s faith our own:  not simply her faith in Christ’s power, but also her faith in His patience and compassion.  There is no true need in our lives that we should not offer to God.

Is every petition answered as we wish, as are the petitions of this woman and the official?  Some Christians stop offering their petitions to God—or even stop believing in God—when He doesn’t provide the responses they want.  But growth in prayer requires the acceptance of God’s “No”’s, and learning through them to trust more deeply His providential Will.

The Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
Ez 2:2-5  +  2 Cor 12:7-10  +  Mk 6:1-6
July 8, 2018

So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there….

This past week, as we’ve celebrated Independence Day, we’ve reflected on one of the things nearest and dearest to us Americans:  freedom, or as our Founding Fathers described it, liberty.  The Declaration of Independence is founded upon the God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  After the most fundamental human right—the right to life—comes the human right to liberty.

We can think about the morality of human freedom by using an image from C.S. Lewis:  that of a ship sailing out to sea.  Call it the U.S.S. Liberty.  Imagine that in your moral life as a Catholic, you are the first mate on this ship.  This image reflects three different dimensions of Catholic morality and freedom.

The first dimension is carried out by keeping your ship in shape:  this is personal morality, and is based on the virtues.  The second dimension is when you keep your ship from running into other ships that are out there at sea:  this is social ethics, and is based upon the Commandments, especially the latter seven.  The third dimension comes from knowing that you are at sea on a mission.  You’ve been sent to go somewhere, not just to float on the waters.  This is our final morality, which shows how our earthly choices are connected to where we will spend eternity.  Our final morality is based especially upon the four Last Things.

But none of these three sides of morality—personal, social, or final—makes any sense until we recognize what our human freedom really is, and what it is not.

Today’s Gospel passage proclaims that God’s love for us is absolute.  God respects our freedom absolutely.  He does so in a way which can be hard for us to understand.  Often, our drawing closer to someone else means coming under that person’s influence or even control, and from that experience we tend to flinch.  We believe that you can’t draw closer to another without some measure of your freedom being taken away.  Love is a tie that binds, we believe.

In fact, our most base instincts tell us that freedom means only “freedom from” others.  These base instincts try to convince us to stay stuck in the adolescent stage of life.  Of course, it’s only natural that the first several years of human life are spent in the process of separation from others.

Unfortunately, some people spend their entire lives pursuing only this “freedom from” others.  They see independence as the “be all and end all” of freedom, rather than as a means to a more profound type of freedom.  This is the “freedom for”:  the freedom to exercise the capacities we bear within.  As Christians, we understand our capacities as capacities to serve others:  God and neighbor.  The “freedom from” is meant to serve this “freedom for” others.

Those who pursue only the former type of freedom end up separating themselves from others.  As a result, they end their lives in isolation.  This gives us an insight into the meaning of the eternal Hell that results from mortal sin:  Hell is complete isolation, the result of a human person being turned in upon himself.

Christian freedom is unique.  The union between a human being and God doesn’t mean being absorbed by God, or being controlled by Him.  At every step of our journey towards God, we are fully free to accept or reject Him.  So ask for God’s grace, to accept Him more fully, in order to serve Him more fully by loving Him, your neighbors and yourself in an authentic, selfless way.

Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
Amos 9:11-15  +  Matthew 9:14-17
July 7, 2018

“Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”

It’s the disciples of St. John the Baptist—and not the saint himself—who appear and speak in today’s Gospel passage.  Nonetheless, today’s passage offers us similarities and contrasts between these two cousins:  one of them the voice of the Word, and the other the Word made Flesh.

One of the more obvious contrasts concerns fasting, and the fact that John’s disciples fast while Jesus’ do not.  But John’s disciples misunderstand the reason for this difference.  They misunderstand the relationship between John and Jesus.  Perhaps they thought of them as two equally inspiring religious figures.  Perhaps they thought of them as two equally valid paths leading to God’s righteousness.

In fact, John leads to Jesus.  John himself preached this clearly, but his disciples did not hear John clearly.

The last four sentences of today’s Gospel passage offer two mini-parables as a way to see these differences between John and Jesus.  Jesus is the new wine that must be poured into new wineskins.  This parable echoes His first public miracle at Cana [John 2:1-12].  To follow Jesus, a new approach to God must be accepted.  To be a disciple means to follow John in the constant need for penance and repentance.

Friday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
Amos 8:4-6,9-12  +  Matthew 9:9-13
July 6, 2018

“I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Today’s Gospel passage presents to us the vocation of Saint Matthew.  The word “vocation” literally means a “calling”.  A vocation is something “vocal”, which comes from the Voice of God (or perhaps better, the Word of God).  That might not seem earth-shattering news.  But what we sometimes forget is that a Christian vocation is not announced by Christ to a Christian at a single initial moment, as the old TV series began each week with the explanation of the spy’s mission, should he choose to accept it.

Rather, a Christian vocation is “declared” to the Christian in an on-going, unfolding manner.  Of course, it’s true that in the beginning a specific form of vocation is made known:  marriage or life as a vowed religious, for example.  But that is only the beginning of Christ’s announcement of one’s vocation.  That is only the beginning of Christ’s guidance.

Throughout the course of living out one’s Christian vocation, the Christian must expect, listen for, and heed God’s Word.  Each of these is a different skill in the skill-set required to flourish in one’s vocation.

Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
Amos 7:10-17  +  Matthew 9:1-8
July 5, 2018

“The Lord took me from following the flock, and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’”

Amos, the Old Testament prophet from whose book we hear in today’s First Reading, was considered obnoxious because he preached the need of repentance on the part of everyone in Israel, including the king and the priests.  Amaziah tried to get the king to get rid of Amos:  not only because he took offense at Amos’ preaching, but also because he held Amos in contempt.

Amaziah considered Amos a “nobody”.  Amos actually admitted that he was not a prophet in his own right.  Nor did he belong to the official guild of prophets, which was a considerably large group.  Amos was just a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores.  On top of that, Amos was not even from Israel:  he was from the southern land of Judah, which had not yet been combined with Israel into one kingdom.  So he was a foreigner in Israel.

But in spite of all appearances, Amos had credentials of the highest order.  It was the Lord Himself who had taken Amos from the south, to be a prophet in the north.  Amos’ worth was not due to his own wisdom.  It was due only to the fact that the Lord had called him.  As the old saying goes, “God does not call those who are qualified.  He qualifies those whom He calls.”

In other words, we trust that when the Lord gives us a job to do, He’s also going to give us the grace needed to complete that job.  This is true of any small, daily job the Lord might hand one of His sons or daughters.  God probably has such a job in mind for you this day.  So expect that job, but also trust that God will grant you the grace to complete it.

Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
Amos 5:14-15,21-24  +  Matthew 8:28-34
July 4, 2018

…when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.

As we Americans celebrate Independence Day, it’s important for us to consider the spiritual independence from evil that each of us needs, and which only Jesus can give.  Today’s Gospel helps us reflect on the conflict required to achieve spiritual independence.

While some in our day and age dismiss the possibility of demonic possession, suggesting that reported cases of possession are only psychological disorders, the Church takes today’s Gospel passage at its word.

One striking point in this passage is the reaction of people to the swineherds’ report:  “they begged [Jesus] to leave their district.”  Why do the people react this way?  One might expect the people instead to express gratitude to Jesus, and invite Him to stay as their protector.

Perhaps the people were in shock, never before imagining that demons might dwell among them.  However, demonic possession in the Holy Land was not uncommon in Jesus’ day.  The reaction of the people might reflect a belief that demonic possession only happens to “other” people, much as people in our own day think that tragedy only strikes others.  Some people today, when tragedy strikes in their own lives, react by blaming God, regardless of who truly—if anyone—was to blame.  Some people even stop practicing their religion after being struck by tragedy, so difficult is it for them to understand God’s providential Will.

While each of us needs to practice prudence in order to deter sin, violence and death in our lives, we should have no illusions of escaping them altogether.  Instead of praying to avoid suffering, we need to stand fast with Our Savior on Calvary, knowing that suffering is an essential part of achieving freedom from evil.

St. Thomas, Apostle
Ephesians 2:19-22  +  John 20:24-29
July 3, 2018

“…bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”

The Scriptures for the Mass of St. Thomas’ feast actually focus on him very little.  It’s not uncommon for the First Reading on the feast of an apostle to be either written by him or at least refer to him in passing.  However, today’s First Reading from St. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians does not mention Thomas.  Its focus is the Church.

What is the Church, and what is her relation to Christ?  One might argue that today’s First Reading was chosen for this feast because it refers to the Church’s “foundation of the Apostles and prophets”.  But St. Paul links these apostles and prophets directly to Christ.  This foundation is related to Christ who is the Church’s “capstone”.

This capstone—Christ—is the Church’s source of unity.  The last sentence of today’s First Reading uses the word “together” twice.  It’s through Christ that the Church’s members are “held together” and grow “into a temple”.  In Him the Church’s members are “built together” as “a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”  You yourself are a member of this great work of God!  Give thanks today for God’s gift of the Church, and for the spiritual growth that God offers you through this “dwelling place”.