St. Barnabas, Apostle
Acts 11:21-26;13:1-3  +  Matthew 5:33-37
June 11, 2022

“Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’, and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’”

Saturday is the day of the week dedicated to Our Blessed Mother Mary.  We ought, each Saturday morning or afternoon, spend time in devotion to her.  One way to foster such devotion is to reflect on the Scriptures from that morning’s Mass in light of Mary’s life and vocation.

In today’s Gospel passage Jesus continues His Sermon on the Mount.  We could listen to the entire sermon picturing Our Lady, reflecting upon how she fulfills in her life and vocation everything Jesus is saying.

By way of example, consider Jesus’ fulfillment of this command of the Law:  “Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.”  Immediately there comes to mind the scene of the Annunciation, and the words that Our Blessed Mother spoke:  “I am the maidservant of the Lord.  Let it be done unto me according to your Word.”

As Jesus offers His teaching in today’s Gospel passage about how disciples need to be faithful to their word, we can see in Our Lady the fulfillment of the Law.  We see in Mary that being faithful to one’s word means being faithful to the Word who became Flesh for us, and who offers us that Gift in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

St. Barnabas Healing the Sick (click HERE)

Friday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 5:27-32

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.’”

Jesus continues in today’s Gospel passage to give examples of the Law being fulfilled.  Today’s two examples are about adultery and divorce.  While both examples concern human sexuality, Jesus’ teachings about these two grave sins take different approaches.

Regarding adultery, in order to show the fulfillment of God’s Law Jesus takes us within the human person.  Jesus teaches us that not only outward actions can condemn.  So also can inner actions of the mind and heart.

Regarding divorce, Jesus reverses Moses’ allowance of this practice.  Not only does Jesus not permit divorce.  He also clarifies that when a divorced person enters another relationship, adultery is the result.

Undoubtedly, both of Jesus’ examples in today’s Gospel passage seem to make following Jesus more difficult than following the letter of the Law.  In our own day, there are some who find the Church’s consistent teaching that the divorced and remarried may not receive Holy Communion too difficult.  Yet in the midst of all such perceived difficulties, Jesus sets us on the right road to healing from our sins and the many negative effects of our sins.  For our part, we need to turn around and begin travelling in the right direction.

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity [C]
Proverbs 8:22-31  +  Romans 5:1-5  +  John 16:12-15

“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”

The Church celebrates today the central mystery of our Christian Faith.  The life of the Most Holy Trinity is the mystery from which all the other mysteries of our Catholic Faith flow.  Yet the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is difficult to wrap our heads around.

The Church, however, has learned over the centuries a simple means by which to explore this awesome mystery.  The Church reflects upon who God is by looking at what God has chosen to do.  This principle has a very technical name:  “The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree”.

This principle is readily seen in families.  You have a parent, and you have a child, and about the child you say, “That apple didn’t fall far from the tree”.  When you say that, everyone knows what you mean.  The child resembles his parent.

We hear a divine example of the “apple principle” in today’s First Reading from the Old Testament Book of Proverbs.  In this passage is a discourse given by “the wisdom of God”.  In the second half of the discourse, we hear two intriguing statements.  Wisdom not only says, “When the Lord established the heavens I was there,” but also, “then was I beside Him as His craftsman… and I found delight in the human race.”

Wisdom is the Lord’s “craftsman”, who “found delight in the human race.”  Everything God created in the universe was created with wisdom—that is, was created in an ordered way—because God Himself is All-Wise, and His apples don’t fall far from the tree.

Nonetheless, out of all of God’s creation, it’s “in the human race” that wisdom takes particular delight.  In the beginning—in the Book of Genesis—we hear the Lord say, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” [Genesis 1:26].  In other words, the apple that is the human race didn’t fall far from the tree, and in fact is the apple of God’s eye [see Psalm 17:8].

In today’s Responsorial Psalm the psalmist cries out in wonder to God, asking, “When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers… What is man that You should be mindful of him… ?  [Yet] You have made him little less than the angels…  You have given him rule over the works of your hands”.  In other words, because God created mankind in His Image and likeness, God gave mankind a share in His “rule over the works of [God’s] hands”.  Or as we might rather put it today, God entrusted to man the stewardship of the works of God’s hands.

All this, of course, begs two questions that lead us into the heart of today’s feast:  #1: what is the Image and likeness of God; and #2: what is God’s work?  The answer to both is simple, because the answer to both is the same:  to love.  The image and likeness of God is love, and God’s work is the work of love.

“God is love” [1 John 4:8].  Because God is love through and through—because God is 100% love—everything that God does is loving.  There’s no divorce between who God is and what He does.  The divine Image is to be love, and so we also are called always to do what is loving in every circumstance.

To help us in this regard, Holy Mother Church teaches us by means of the Sacred Liturgy.  We could say that last Sunday, this Sunday, and next Sunday form a triptych:  a three-paneled icon that focuses our devotion.  Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, and Corpus Christi display before us the Holy Spirit within the Church, the Father Who is the Source of the Trinity, and the Blessed Sacrament of Our Savior’s Real Presence.

Prepare for next Sunday’s feast of Corpus Christi with an eye to growing in your capacity to love:  to be love through your daily choices.  The Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, made present sacramentally through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, shows us sinners our clearest example of what it means to “be love” through a human will and heart.  Rather than love only those who are lovable, and only when circumstances make it easy to do so, Christ calls and strengthens us through the Eucharist to live and love from within His sacrificial love, and so enter more deeply into the Life of the Trinity.

Thursday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
I Kings 18:41-46  +  Matthew 5:20-26
June 9, 2022

“But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment ….”

In yesterday’s Gospel passage, Our Lord stated that He had come not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.  Beginning today, in the Gospel at weekday Mass we hear examples of Jesus fulfilling the Law.

Jesus uses a phrase today that He repeats several times throughout the fifth chapter of Matthew.  The phrase “You have heard that it was said…” signals that Jesus wants to present a contrast to us.  First, Jesus presents a basic teaching that comes from the Jewish Law:  for example, in today’s Gospel passage, “You have heard that it was said… ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’”

Then, Jesus explains how such a teaching of the Law is to be fulfilled.  He declares today:  “But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment….”  The rest of today’s Gospel passage is Jesus’ unpacking of His new teaching, which again, is the fulfillment of an ancient teaching from the Law.

Today, then, we strive to reflect on Jesus’ specific example of anger.  What is the means by which Jesus teaches His disciples to enter into the fulfillment of this teaching?  The means is reconciliation.  Jesus, in the examples He cites, gives two commands:  “go first and be reconciled with your brother”, and “Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him.”  Meditate, then, on reconciliation with your neighbor as a form of love of neighbor, and thus as a means to the love of God.

Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
I Kings 18:20-39  +  Matthew 5:17-19
June 8, 2022

“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

This week we’ve begun to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, from the fifth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel account.  After the Beatitudes (in Monday’s Gospel) and the similes of the disciples as salt and light (in yesterday’s Gospel), Jesus today sets the framework for the teachings He’s about to offer the disciples.  We could sum up this framework with these words:  “I have come not to abolish [the Law] but to fulfill.” 

Having said that, in the rest of today’s Gospel passage He strictly directs His disciples to integrity in their lives.  There must be integrity between, as we would put it today, what they practice and what they preach.  With this demand Jesus issues a warning and promise:  “whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven”, while “whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”

Every Christian is, by virtue of baptism, called to be a teacher.  We remember St. Francis’ admonition to “preach always, and if necessary, use words.”  As each of us makes our nightly examination of conscience, we look for the integrity Jesus has asked of us, in what we’ve taught others by our actions and words.

Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time [II]
I Kings 17:7-16  +  Matthew 5:13-16
June 7, 2022

“But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?”

Yesterday at weekday Mass we began hearing from the Sermon on the Mount, which is found in the fifth through seventh chapters of the Gospel account of Saint Matthew (5:3—7:27).  In today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls His disciples “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world”.  Either of these could serve you as the basis for a long period of meditation.  But consider just one aspect of what Jesus sets before you today.

Salt has long been used as a preservative of food.  So one might be tempted to consider Jesus’ image of “the salt of the earth” as meaning that Christians are called to preserve life.  In other words, Christians are called to preserve what we already have.  But the following words of Jesus suggest something further.

Jesus speaks of salt in terms of its taste, as a seasoning.  As most of us know, salt isn’t meant to be tasted by itself.  Most of us would be repulsed by even the idea of putting a spoonful of salt in our mouths.  But it’s common to sprinkle salt liberally on one’s food in order to bring out the taste within the food.

Here we can reflect on Jesus’ image in terms of our own discipleship.  If Jesus’ disciples are “the salt of the earth”, Jesus is paying a compliment to “the earth”.  There is value—taste—in the world because it was created by God.  Even though the world that we live in is full of sin, our role as disciples involves bringing out what is good in God’s creation—cultivating that good—so that it might be elevated by God’s supernatural grace.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church
Genesis 3:9-15,20 [or Acts 1:12-14]  +  John 19:25-34

And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

On the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes in 2018, Robert Cardinal Sarah—the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments—announced the institution of a new obligatory memorial for the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.  This memorial is to be celebrated every year on Pentecost Monday, which is to say, the day following Pentecost Sunday.  In the Extraordinary Form of Holy Mass, this is the second day of the Octave of Pentecost.

In his decree inscribing this new memorial into the General Roman Calendar, Cardinal Sarah noted the following:

“The joyous veneration given to the Mother of God by the contemporary Church, in light of reflection on the mystery of Christ and on His nature, cannot ignore the figure of a woman (cf. Gal 4:4), the Virgin Mary, who is both the Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church.”

“Indeed, the Mother standing beneath the cross (cf. Jn 19:25), accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal. She thus became the tender Mother of the Church which Christ begot on the cross handing on the Spirit. Christ, in turn, in the beloved disciple, chose all disciples as ministers of his love towards his Mother, entrusting her to them so that they might welcome her with filial affection.”

“This celebration will help us to remember that growth in the Christian life must be anchored to the Mystery of the Cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic Banquet and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Redeemed, the Virgin who makes her offering to God.”

Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Acts 28:16-20,30-31  +  John 21:20-25

I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.

This morning’s Gospel passage consists of the final six verses of the Gospel according to John.  The Easter Season draws to a close, then, with an almost parenthetical reminder that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ earthly life are by no means exhaustive.  Nor are they meant to be.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in composing their accounts of the Gospel, did not aim to give an exhaustive record of Jesus’ saving words and deeds.  For that matter, even if all of the words spoken—and deeds carried out—by Jesus during His earthily life were recorded, that account of the Gospel would not be the “final word”.

Does this assertion sound blasphemous?  Does it reduce the power and beauty of the Incarnate Word?

In truth, it reveals the full intent—the full vocation and mission—of the Incarnate Word.  God’s providential, covenantal, saving Work blossoms through the life of the Mystical Body of Christ:  the Church.  The life of the Church—from her conception in the Sacred Triduum, to her birth at Pentecost, until her consummation on the Last Day—is the Way, the Truth, and the Life of Jesus on this earth.

Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Acts 25:13-21  +  John 21:15-19

Peter was distressed that He had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?”

On these last two weekdays of Easter, our Gospel passage comes from the epilogue of John’s Gospel account.  In these final days, we hear John’s account of Jesus’ “final word”, which echoes what John records time and time again throughout his Scriptural writings (the Book of Revelation, his three epistles, and his Gospel account).

Jesus’ “final word” is Love—caritas—which in fact is the very nature of the Triune God, and so then also of the “Word made Flesh”.  As we prepare to celebrate the Sundays and other solemnities that flow forth from the Easter Season, we meditate on the meaning of the Caritas Who Is God.  In the weeks following the Easter Season, the Church will celebrate the Solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity, Corpus Christi, and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Through each of these, the Church reflects and liturgically celebrates the goodness of God’s very nature:  the Love that the Risen Jesus extends to us.

Today, Jesus calls Peter, the Rock of the Church, to accept this divine caritas as the heart of his own life and ministry.  We pray for our Holy Father, the Pope.  We also pray for ourselves, that no matter what our vocation may be, our lives will also reflect this divine outpouring of love.