Monday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Daniel 1:1-6,8-20  +  Luke 21:1-4

“…she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.”

We live in a society in which values that are contrary to the Gospel are canonized.  A person’s value is measured in economic terms.  The poor are shunned as worthless.

God has a different set of values from those of our society.  When Jesus saw the wealthy putting large amounts of money into the collection box of the Temple, He was not impressed.  It was not as if the wealthy should not have given large sums, but Jesus was looking for something else.  He saw that something else in the poor widow who donated only two small coins.  He explains to us what He saw:  “[The wealthy] have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.”

It was the generosity of the widow that mattered, not the money she gave.  We are called to be generous people, unselfish in all our relationships with others.  God does not value us for giving our money; or, for that matter, for giving our time and talent.  God values us for the generosity from which our giving flows.  Generosity flows from the love that we receive in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe [A]
Ez 34:11-12,15-17  +  1 Cor 15:20-26,28  +  Mt 25:31-46
November 26, 2017

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

If a poll were taken this month asking, “Do you like the fact that it’s now getting dark in the late afternoon?”, most of us would quickly respond, “No!”  Yet we know that the descent of darkness and diminishing days are a natural part of the year’s cycle.  As Winter approaches, the leaves on our trees are dying, animals need shelter, and even the power of the sun seems to weaken.

Death and life go hand-in-hand.  That is what we celebrate on this feast of Christ the King.  The feast of Christ the King is the last Sunday of the Church year.  The liturgical year itself dies this week, and we will gather next Sunday to start a new liturgical year.

Change is what life’s about.  We as individuals change physically, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually during our lives on this earth.  Not only do we ourselves change, but our surroundings change as well:  the face of the earth changes with the seasons.  This relates to the observation of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman: “In a higher world it is otherwise; but here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to change often.”  This Sunday focuses on what for each of us will be the most important change of our existence:  the change from living in this world to living in some place either above or below this world.

On this last Sunday of the Church Year we celebrate the Last Judgment, when Christ will call all the peoples of all the nations throughout the course of history, and judge each of them, one by one.  How long do you think that will take?  If you ever thought the line for confessions during Holy Week was long, just imagine what this line is going to look like!  And if you’ve ever been nervous standing in line waiting for confession, just imagine how nervous you’ll be standing in line waiting to be judged on account of your entire earthly life!

As we wait in that line, that line might be so long that we’ll think that we’ll never reach the front:  that our time will never come.  This is much the same way that many of us lead our lives on earth:  as if we will never die, and never be judged.

We are fortunate that we have the words of Christ to give us some sort of idea about what this judgment will look like.  Did you ever have a teacher who announced upcoming quizzes or tests without giving any idea what material you were going to be tested on?  Not knowing makes the experience all the more difficult.  But Jesus makes it very clear:  whether or not we will be admitted into the Kingdom of God depends upon whether or not we allowed God into our little kingdoms while we lived here on earth, loving Him with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength, and serving Him both in Himself, and in the persons of our neighbors.

St. Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin Martyr
I Maccabees 6:1-13  +  Luke 20:27-40
November 25, 2017

And they no longer dared to ask Him anything.

In today’s Gospel passage, Our Lord tries to make clear to the Sadducees the meaning of the Resurrection.  We too, however, even if we understand and believe in both the Resurrection of Our Lord and the promise of resurrection that God offers to all who die, perhaps may need to realize what type of claim the Resurrection places upon our Christian faith.

To believe in the Resurrection is to believe in the future fulfillment of God’s grace.  It is to understand that the suffering of the present is as nothing compared to the future glory to be revealed in Christ Jesus.  It is to guard in God’s name what has been entrusted to us until that final Day, which for each of us is the day of one’s death.

We never find Our Lord going into great detail about the nature of the afterlife.  There are two practical reasons for this.  First, the glory which will be the reward of God’s elect is too far beyond our comprehension.  Second, our only hope for sharing in that glory is to persevere in running the race which God has set before us, to stir into flame the gift of God each of us first received at our baptism, a flame in which we are purified like gold in the furnace.

St. Andrew Dung-Lac, Priest & Martyr, et soc., Martyrs
I Maccabees 4:36-37,52-59  +  Luke 19:45-48
November 24, 2017

And every day He was teaching in the temple area.

Lots of people in Jesus’ day were fed up with the materialism and commercialism that had crept into the practices of the Temple in Jerusalem.  This place, the Temple, was the holiest place in the entire world for Jews.  One of the obligations of a good Jew in the time of Jesus was to go to Jerusalem at the time of Passover, and offer a sacrifice in the Temple:  those who were wealthy offered an entire ox or sheep; those with less means offered turtledoves.  And so there grew up a very large market during the time around Passover, a system within which many abuses developed.  Jesus undoubtedly had many people cheering for Him as He told off the Jewish officials and the money-makers in the Temple.

But how many people cheered for Him on that occasion when the Jews asked for a sign from Jesus, and He replied, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”?  Probably some were baffled.  Likely, some became angry at Jesus:  here He had purified the Temple, and now He wanted to destroy it?  The Scriptures go on to tell us that Jesus’ own disciples only came to understand His words after His Resurrection, so we only imagine what those who did not know Jesus well thought of these words.  For ourselves, Christ is the Temple, of which we are parts through the Church.  We need to purify ourselves as Jesus cleansed the Temple, so that we might offer right sacrifice there.

Thursday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time [I]
I Maccabees 2:15-29  +  Luke 19:41-44

“If this day you only knew what makes for peace….”

As the Church year draws to an end, Jesus in the weekday Gospel passages is drawing near to His own end in Jerusalem.  There is something a little anachronistic about this.  After all, it’s during Lent that we Christians liturgically observe Jesus drawing closer to His end, an end which culminates in the liturgies of the Sacred Triduum.

However, the end of the Church year—as it focuses on the end of human history itself—helps us realize that Jesus’ end is meant to be our end.  Further, the Risen and Ascended Lord Jesus will judge each of us at the end of time.  So today’s Gospel passage helps us orient our lives to our own end.

This passage is quite melancholy, not only because of Jesus’ tears, but also because of His words.  “If this day you only knew what makes for peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.”  This sentence alone would offer many hours of meditation to one willing to ponder it.  But as Jesus continues to speak, He directs our attention more specifically towards Himself.  That this peace He speaks of is Jesus Himself becomes clear when He notes that the immanent destruction of Jerusalem is due to it not recognizing “the time of [its] visitation.”  Jesus visited God’s People that they might have eternal life, and they put the author of life to death outside Jerusalem.  Each of us shares in this rejection of Jesus by his own sins.

Saint Cecilia, Virgin Martyr
II Maccabees 7:1,20-31  +  Luke 19:11-28
November 22, 2017

“…from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

Those who think of Jesus as a “teddy bear” are challenged by the last sentence of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage.  These words conclude a lengthy parable, which St. Luke the Evangelist prefaces with a clear explanation of the motive for the parable:  Jesus “proceeded to tell a parable because He was near Jerusalem and they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.”

The “king” speaks and acts harshly.  He refers to himself as “a demanding man”, but his greatest demand comes at the end of the parable.  Of his enemies he declares, “bring them here and slay them before me.”  The question is to whom this character in the parable refers in real life?  Can he possibly symbolize Jesus or God the Father?  The king’s demand is reminiscent of practices found in the Old Testament.  God Himself seems in the Old Testament to demand the murder of innocents.  Surely such ideas have no place in the teaching of Jesus?

However, the parable’s own inner logic suggests that the servants did have a choice.  This points to the choice that each servant of God has to follow Him or not.  At the end of each person’s life is a fork.  One branch leads to eternal life and the other to eternal death.  This is where the Kingdom of God comes to its fulfillment.

The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
II Maccabees 6:18-31  +  Luke 19:1-10
November 21, 2017

“…today I must stay at your house.”

Zacchaeus is a rich collector of taxes.  Each of us, like him, is attached to worldly things, no matter how simple.  St. John of the Cross says that just as it does not matter if a bird is tied down by a thick rope or a thin string, so it does not matter if a Christian is tied down by wealthy goods or simple desires.  An attachment is an attachment, and any attachment—no matter how slight—keeps us from union with God.

On the other hand, Zacchaeus, like you, wants to see who Jesus is.  But Zacchaeus has two strikes against him.

The first strike against Zacchaeus is the crowd, because everyone wants to see Jesus.  It’s easy to get lost and not to be loved in a crowd.  One might ask himself, “How can Jesus love everyone?”

The second strike against Zacchaeus is his small size, which may represent the size of one’s own soul.  One might feel unworthy of God’s love, and ask himself, “How could Jesus love little old me?”

So Zacchaeus climbs up into a sycamore tree to see Jesus.  This is all Zacchaeus wants:  to see Jesus.  But that’s not enough for Jesus, so large is Jesus’ Sacred Heart.

Here’s the turning point in this Gospel passage.  When Jesus reached the tree that Zacchaeus had climbed, Jesus looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly; for today I must stay at your house.”  Jesus takes the initiative to reach out to the individual sinner.  Just as He reached out to this little sinner, so He asks entry into the fullness of your heart, mind and soul.

Monday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time [I]
I Maccabees 1:10-15,41-43,54-57,62-63  +  Luke 18:35-43

Then the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, each abandoning his particular customs.

At most of this week’s Masses, the First Reading is taken from the Old Testament books of Maccabees.  These books describe the persecution and perseverance of the Jewish people.  While the particular persecution that they faced may not seem relatable, we need very much in our day to relate to the perseverance that they demonstrated.

In today’s First Reading, the king of Greece “wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, each abandoning his particular customs.  All the Gentiles conformed to the command of the king, and many children of Israel were in favor of his religion”.  The parallel of this situation to the plight of Christians in the United States today is clear.

Today’s passage ends focusing on those Jews “who preferred to die rather than to be defiled… and they did die.  Terrible affliction was upon Israel.”  But we ought to be clear on what leads to this affliction:  the demand for a people to be falsely united.

To what extent may a government demand that a religious body of persons conform their teachings, practices and rituals to a norm established by and in support of that government?  The conflicts in this week’s readings from the Books of Maccabees will help us reflect on this important question.

The Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Prov 31:10-13,19-20,30-31  +  1 Thes 5:1-6  +  Mt 25:14-30
November 19, 2017

“‘And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’”

The old saying tells us that there are two things we can’t escape:  death and taxes.  In fact, there is actually a way to escape taxes, but it’s death:  by leaving this world and all its burdens behind.

This time each year, as the days get shorter, and the Church’s year comes to a close, the Church compels us to think about our own lives growing darker and darker, and finally coming to a close.  What will we face, after we face death?

The Church points our attention towards what our Faith calls the Last Things.  There are four “Last Things”:  death, judgment, Heaven and Hell.  Three out of those four are things that most people would probably rather not think about.  Unfortunately, because of the effects of Original Sin, most of us aren’t going to reach the goal of Heaven without some sober consideration of the other three.

So the Church begins this last month of her year on a high note, by celebrating the Solemnity of All Saints.  The Church proclaims:  “It’s actually possible!  Ordinary men and women like you have made it to Heaven, so have hope as you strive for this goal!”

But from there, throughout the rest of the month, the Church challenges us.  The very day after All Saints’, the Church commemorates All the Souls in Purgatory, who need our prayers because they themselves didn’t fix their attention fully on God during their lives in this world.  Yes, they’re on their way to Heaven, but their souls need to be purified.  Although they didn’t reject God outright, He wasn’t first and foremost in their lives.  At the same time that we pray for the Poor Souls in Purgatory, the Church is implicitly asking us whether we’re likely to spend time there also, after we face death.  If so, then we have the chance to do something about it now, while we are still here on earth.

But as the last Sundays of Ordinary Time are celebrated, the Church challenges us even further.  The Scripture passages are demanding.  Today our Scripture readings help us consider how important our good works are when it comes to the day of our death.

Today’s First Reading reminds us that so much of what we think is important passes away with time.  The reading uses the example of a woman, but it just as easily applies to men:  “Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting; the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

And yet, our good works, if they are rooted in the Lord—if they are directed towards His will—are not fleeting:  or at least, their effects continue to ripple through time.  Speaking again of the soul who follows God faithfully, Scripture says:  “Give her a reward for her labors, and let her works praise her at the city gates.”  We can imagine this referring to the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, where St. Peter stands with those keys that Jesus gave him.

There are some rich people who establish foundations to continue good works after their deaths, but these foundations are often subverted.  Some universities, where such foundations were established, have been sued by descendants of the founders, because the descendants allege that the foundations are not being faithful to the intentions of the founders.

The fact is that we only have one life on this earth, and we can only control our own actions during the days that are given to us here below.  Our actions will only be godly, and lead us closer to Him, if they are nurtured by God’s own grace:  the grace we’re offered most especially through the Holy Eucharist.