“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
In the Gospel today we hear Jesus say, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Do you, who call yourselves Christians, hear what the Word made Flesh is saying to you? Or do you want to turn your back on the words spoken by Jesus Christ?
Christ died because death is the only way to destroy death’s power. On the Cross, Christ destroyed the power of death by dying Himself. When God Himself died, death split in two. Christ separated the death of the body from the death of the soul, so that the one would not inevitably follow the other. Christ didn’t die so that you wouldn’t have to. Christ died so that the death that you will inevitably face—the death of the body—will not be an eternal one: the death of the soul.
There are two types of death, the death of the body, and the death of the soul. One is much worse than the other. Many people spend a lot of time avoiding the one, but not the other, which is strange. This is strange because the death of the body is unavoidable, while the death of the soul is completely avoidable. The death they try so hard to avoid is the door that Christ has made the gateway to eternal life, while the death they don’t worry much about is a death that never ends: a death that is eternal.
The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time [C] I Samuel 26:2,7-9,12-13,22-23 + 1 Corinthians 15:45-49 + Luke 6:27-38
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
Today’s Scripture passages consider one of the paradoxes about the church that Jesus founded: its rank and file members are both saints and sinners. The Church is indeed the Body of Christ, but that body’s members are weak human beings. In other words, while the Church is a divine institution, it’s also a human institution.
In today’s Second Reading, Saint Paul makes clear to the members of the Church in Corinth that Christians are both saints and sinners. But in making this point, Saint Paul is careful to avoid the pitfall that is so easy to fall into spiritually: that is, to look at the members of the Church and to begin labeling them, saying that this person is a sinner, while that person is a saint.
It’s easy in our minds to divvy up the Church into these two groups: the saints on this side, and the sinners on that side. But if the Church is the Body of Christ, it cannot simply have all the sinners on one side and all the saints on the other, like some sort of person with a split personality. Instead, the truth is more complex.
Each and every member of the Church’s Body—with the exception, of course, of the Blessed Virgin Mary—is both a saint and a sinner. Every member of the Body of Christ has within himself or herself this pull between one’s desire to sin and one’s call to be holy. Likewise, every member of the Body of Christ experiences the conflict between one’s own sins and God’s grace. The Christian must decide which of these two to give oneself over to.
St. Paul in the Second Reading is preaching the truth that, just as the Christian resembles the man from earth, so the Christian also is called to bear the likeness of the man from Heaven. We humans are by our fallen nature sinners. But by God’s call we are Christians, called to share in the life of God. Though this truth of the spiritual life is complex, we must constantly keep it in mind, not only in regard to others, but first of all in regard to ourselves.
Yet today’s First Reading seems to speak not about the rank-and-file members of the Church, but about those in authority. Those in authority within the Church are members of the Head of the Church’s Mystical Body. Here also, we have to realize that those in authority are sinners at the same time that they are called to be holy.
The person of faith, like David in the First Reading, understands that the holiness of a man’s office should inspire respect within us as long as that individual holds office. Just as David would not harm the head of his enemy Saul because Saul had been anointed by God to lead His people, so we must respect those who have authority over us, even when we find their personal actions lacking, and possibly at times sinful. The refusal of many people to bear such respect is, without a doubt, one clear reason for our society’s decay.
We must remember, though, that all respect begins with the respect that children owe their parents. This is so because the “domestic church”—the family—is the most foundational building block of both civil societies and the societies within the Church (for example, parishes and dioceses).
Unfortunately, just as we witness the institution of marriage being mocked in the media and in the lives of many members of our society, so also is the institution of parenthood mocked. Television shows that call themselves comedies portray parents as idiots and their children as the only persons with common sense.
Certainly, there may be in our day a clearer and more open understanding that parents are human beings: that they make mistakes in what they try to do for their children. Nonetheless, the parent who does not demand respect from his children in both language and action is doing a grave disservice to his children. This respect grows more easily within the home where prayer and forgiveness are part and parcel of daily life. What a difference we would see in the world if each member of each family would each day proclaim the words of St. Paul: “I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” [Eph 3:14-15].
He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected ….
Asking the right question is extremely important in many situations that we face in life. It’s also important to ask the right type of question. For instance, there are questions that ask “How?”, calling for technological answers. On the other hand, “Why?” questions deal with meaning: they call for deeper answers.
We find Jesus Christ in today’s Gospel account asking his disciples to tell Him who they think He really is.
Jesus had two reasons for asking His question. One was to have His disciples give some serious thought to just who they thought they were following. The other was to take the opportunity to teach them about what was going to happen to Him. In other words, where was He going? By extension, where would they end up if they kept following Him?
Is Jesus an interesting historical figure? Is He, as the Muslims say, a great prophet? Is he one among many in a long line of Jewish rabbis?
Or is He unique? Is Christ Jesus God in the Flesh, in order that we can see Him, know Him, and love Him as one of us: in other words, God so that He can save us, and man so that we can receive His divinity through His humanity? Christ Jesus is God the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, made incarnate, made human flesh and blood for us. It is, then, His suffering greatly and being rejected that makes possible this “great exchange”: our sinfulness for God’s own divine life.
Then He laid hands on the man’s eyes a second time and he saw clearly ….
An obvious question leaps out from today’s Gospel narrative. Why did Jesus have to lay hands upon the blind man twice for him to see clearly? Doesn’t the fact that He did reveal some weakness or impotence on the part of Jesus?
There is an assumption within this latter question: that Jesus could not have healed the blind man by a single laying on of hands. But if Jesus could have done this, why did He not?
This question (neither Jesus Himself nor the evangelist specifies why Jesus laid hands upon the blind man twice) points to a general theological principle about God: that is, that God does not always effect His Providential Will in the most direct manner possible. In other words, God does not always choose to manifest His power in the briefest, most direct and most “efficient” manner possible.
This principle does not answer the question of why God acts as He does. But the truth behind this principle is related to another, that God sometimes chooses as the agents of His Will not the strongest, brightest, or best qualified. God has a love for the poor, the simple, and the feeble.
To return again to today’s Gospel narrative: perhaps Jesus wanted to foster perseverance within the blind man. Perhaps Jesus wanted the blind man to desire healing more deeply. Perhaps Jesus wanted the blind man to appreciate fully the gift he was being given. Regardless, the unfolding of God’s Providential Will, whether or not it takes the form we think it should, reveals God’s love to us even in the manner in which it’s revealed.
Frustration in and of itself must not be a sin, or Jesus—according to the portraits painted by the evangelists—would not be divine. Today’s Gospel passage ends with a question from Jesus. While we can be sure that Jesus’ next action involved compassion, we might instead back up and reflect on this passage in terms of our selves, inasmuch as we often imitate the disciples in this passage.
There are two things lacking in these disciples. First, they “had forgotten to bring bread”. This is a practical omission on their part, and surely each of us can relate to it. But this is not Jesus’ real concern.
Instead, when Jesus enjoins the disciples to “guard against the leaven” of the Pharisees and Herod, the disciples take Jesus’ words literalistically rather than in the analogical manner in which He meant them. In other words, the disciples were so concerned with physical hunger that they couldn’t see past it. They couldn’t see that Jesus was speaking about something far more important: the spiritual means by which the Pharisees and Herod, on the one hand, and Jesus on the other, considered spiritual growth to take place. Pray today that your very real practical concerns about life might never obscure the even more important spiritual needs that require your tending today.
Do we search for heavenly signs as assurance that we are on the right path in life? Today’s Gospel passage, brief and to the point, ought to make us realize how pointless such a search is. Jesus’ sigh—“from the depth of His Spirit”—speaks volumes. His departure from the midst of the Pharisees does in fact serve as a sober sign of His recognition that even His divine words do nothing for one unwilling to listen to Him in faith. Christ asks us to dedicate each day to him in faith.
A life which is not dedicated to God ends up being a selfish life, a life that excludes both God and one’s brothers and sisters. This sort of life is opposed to the very practical counsel that Saint James offer throughout the course of the epistle that we begin today to hear at daily Mass. This sort of life leads to one being a “man of two minds, unstable in all his ways”, as St. James writes in today’s First Reading. Today we begin hearing at weekday Mass from the letter of St. James. This is letter is full of practical wisdom, and pulls no punches about the fate awaiting the “man of two minds”.
That fate will be ours unless we are willing to cooperate with God’s grace to conquer the power of sin. Sin is conquered first through faith, and perfectly through charity. We are invited to share in this perfect love of God through the Mass. When we are dismissed from Mass, we take and offer this same love to our brothers and sisters within our daily lives.
Saturday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Mark 8:1-10
Then, taking the seven loaves He gave thanks ….
That the miracle described in today’s Gospel account foreshadows the Sacrament of the Eucharist is clear. What could get overlooked, however, is an action of Jesus only briefly described in the midst of this miracle. The evangelist explains that “taking the seven loaves [Jesus] gave thanks, broke them, and gave them”.
Jesus’ act of giving thanks here is described by the evangelist with the Greek verb “eucharisteo”. It’s from this word that the English word “Eucharist” derives. Likely we think of the act of thanksgiving as being part of what the Eucharist is about, but it’s another thing to recognize that this most blessed of the seven sacraments is named after the very act of giving thanks.
In contrasting the four basic types of vocal prayer—petition, thanksgiving, contrition and adoration—thanksgiving is not the most selfless. Adoration focuses more solely on God in His own goodness. Thanksgiving regards what God has done for me, not purely for His own glory. Nonetheless, without thanksgiving, we cannot advance to prayer of adoration. Giving thanks for what God has done for one allows one to grow in the humility needed to adore God authentically.
Friday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Mark 7:31-37
He ordered them not to tell anyone.
Perhaps the difficulty that many of us modern persons have with prayer is nothing more than the fact that we’ve forgotten how to have a conversation with anyone, much less with the Almighty. In the Gospel today, we see Jesus take aside a man who is both deaf and mute. Jesus heals him of his ailments. Jesus tells those around them not to speak of the miracle. But immediately, they proceed to do just that, and the more He orders them not to, the more they do it. These people, maybe, are examples of what happens during our own prayer: there is praise of God, words spoken about God, and even words spoken to God. But all these words drown out Jesus’ demand to be silent.
The English word “obedience” comes from the Latin word which means “to listen”. These people in the Gospel refuse to listen to what Jesus is telling them, and so, even in praising Jesus, they are disobeying Him.
In our prayer, in our conversation with God, we should listen at least twice as much as we speak. More importantly, we should listen first, before beginning to speak to Him. Silence, though, can be deafening. Were we to stop saying what we want to say, we might lose control of the conversation, and there would be no telling what we might hear in that silence. Perhaps what God has to say to us would be difficult for us to hear, and would demand self-sacrifice from us.
The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C] Jeremiah 17:5-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:12,16-20 + Luke 6:17,20-26
“Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!”
It’s hard to confuse the choices presented in today’s Scripture readings. The sharp contrast between the blessings and maledictions proclaimed by the prophet Jeremiah and our Lord Jesus offer only two choices: life or death, blessing or woe. Even more important, though, is the fact that the Christian’s choice must be rooted in the divine virtue of hope. “Blessed are they who hope in the Lord”, we proclaim in today’s Responsorial Psalm.
But are we blessed? Do we hope in the Lord? What do we hope for in life? The answers to these questions lay bare our future: not only in this life, but also in the life to come. The things that we hope for in life make clear what we can hope to expect in our future. Saint Paul in the Second Reading preaches that the Christian can hope only in the resurrected Christ. The Christian centers his life around the Death and Resurrection of the Messiah, holding them as the pattern of his thoughts, words, and actions. In other words, whenever we hope for something in this life, we should hope as Jesus hoped for things during His life.
We only need one example to get at the heart of how Jesus hoped during His earthly life. We need only picture Jesus at one setting in His life: as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, moments after His Last Supper, and moments before His betrayal and arrest. Jesus had two choices to pray over in the Garden. He had two different things He could hope for. He could hope to escape the destiny that was walking towards Him at that moment, with spears and silver pieces in hand. Or He could hope to die.
In our own daily lives, if Christ truly lives in us, we live in Him as members of His Body. His Death and Resurrection are our own, if they are our hope. Of course, most of us have no difficulty hoping for resurrection in our lives, but can we hope to share in His suffering as well? We may grow used to accepting suffering as a natural part of life, but can we prayerfully hope for it?
In his Spiritual Canticle, St. John of the Cross writes: “Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire.”
When we come to this matter of the spiritual life, we have to be very careful. Of course, it would be foolishness to hope for suffering for its own sake. Jesus did not will His Suffering and Death on the Cross for its own sake. The only thing He ever hoped for in life was to do the Will of His Father. But as He prayed in Gethsemane, He knew that His Father willed for Him to die on the Cross.
Whatever we hope for, we hope in the Lord. It is not for us to parcel out for ourselves a little suffering here, and a little resurrection there. The only thing we can hope for in our lives is the Will of our Father in Heaven, and often we are not given to learn what that is far in advance. Often God asks us to walk step by step through our lives, dependent upon Him each day. Consider the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales, who said, “We in this life are walking, as it were, on ice.” At times, we have no idea how thick or thin that ice is. At times, it seems we are not merely walking but skating on thin ice.
As Christians, we look to the Cross and worship Christ crucified. We know that His death means our life. But to grow in our spiritual lives means to realize that at times, our own spiritual suffering is a great source of growth. At times, neither of the choices which we find ourselves facing in life seem to hold much hope. But as we pray and ask God to guide us, we cannot expect God always to show us “the light”. At times, God simply shows us where to walk, and that place may not be any brighter than where we’ve just come from.
Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy 