St. Clare, Virgin
Deuteronomy 34:1-12  +  Matthew 18:15-20
August 11, 2021

“… where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Jesus, in today’s Gospel Reading, explains how His followers can keep from having moral punishment fall upon them.  Jesus preaches that His followers must seek reconciliation with each other.  He also calls upon us to point out a wrong that may have been committed, especially one which destroys harmony and peace.

Correcting others in this way is a very hazardous duty.  Like almost no other responsibility that we have as Christians, it calls for the virtues of prudence, courage, and meekness.  Who can manage this without the help of the Holy Spirit?

Jesus also urges us to pray together.  Individual prayer is indispensable, and Jesus elsewhere in the Gospel commands us to go to our rooms and pray in private:  but that’s not the limit of our prayer.  Where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ Name, He is there in their midst.  But we also know that where two or three are gathered for the Mass, Jesus is not only there in their midst, but becomes present in a way that they can receive Him:  Body and Blood, soul and divinity.

St. Lawrence, Deacon & Martyr
2 Corinthians 9:6-10  +  John 12:24-26
August 10, 2021

… whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

In the year of Our Lord 258, Saint Lawrence offered the wealth of the Church to those who had nothing of their own.  Lawrence was the chief deacon—the arch-deacon—of the Diocese of Rome.  Part of the responsibility of a deacon is to proclaim the Word of God, to look after the material goods of the Church, and to care for the poor, and so as the chief deacon of a diocese as large as Rome, Lawrence held a great deal of responsibility.

He was called to act upon all these roles one day when Pope Sixtus II was put under civil arrest (Christianity still being an illegal religion).  Not long after, the pope was martyred, and Lawrence knew that he would be one of the next Christians the Empire would come after.  So Lawrence sought out the poor, widows, and orphans of Rome, and gave them all the money he held, selling even the sacred vessels of the Church.

The civil prefect of Rome called Lawrence before him and demanded that he produce the treasure of the Church.  Lawrence then gathered together the blind and the lame, the leprous, the widows and orphans, and lined them up before the prefect’s villa.  When the prefect arrived, Lawrence simply said, “Here is the treasure of the Church.”  The prefect not only did not understand Lawrence’s words.  He also did not understand Lawrence spending his life in the service of such people.  It’s unlikely, in fact, that the prefect cared, since four days after the death of the pope, Lawrence was martyred as well, on August Tenth.

Saint Lawrence understood that the true wealth of the Church lays in the manner in which our lives touch the lives of others.  In our own lives as Christians, one of the most important challenges we face is to realize to what extent—both for good and evil—our lives are connected to the lives of others.

St. Lawrence Distributing Alms by Fra Angelico [1395-1455]

 

Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Deuteronomy 10:12-22  +  Matthew 17:22-27
August 9, 2021

“Give that to them for me and for you.”

Jesus sometimes worked grand spectacles through His miracles.  But as impressive as they are, spectacles were not the norm for Jesus.  More frequent is what, in the life of St. Thérèse the Little Flower, was called the “Little Way”.  Though the Little Flower coined the phrase, the Little Way is the Way of Jesus.

His way is one of simplicity and humility that often goes overlooked by those seeking spectacles.  It is a way that is ignored by those who are looking out for themselves, instead of others:  by those who justify their actions by claiming that they’re just doing what everyone else is doing, walking down the broad path, instead of trying to walk the narrow way that following Jesus demands.

The simplicity and humility of Jesus in today’s Gospel offers a very good meditation for today.  Jesus is not obligated to pay the tax that is demanded of Peter, but Jesus explains—“that we may not offend them”—that He will pay the tax anyhow.  The miracle by which Jesus accomplishes this almost goes unnoticed, because it’s not the point.  Jesus’ point is to teach by humility, to teach by doing what is not necessary, but which can lead others to see that Little Way that—after a long journey through a life of service in this world—does lead to the great vision of eternal life with God and His saints.

Saturday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Deuteronomy 6:4-13  +  Matthew 17:14-20
August 7, 2021

“‘The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!’”

The beginning of today’s First Reading starts a prayer called the Shema.  To this day, devout Jews pray the Shema each morning and evening.  Some make these words the last they speak before falling asleep.  In the broader context of Jewish liturgy, the Shema consists of verses from both Deuteronomy and Numbers.  But reflect here on just the first two verses.

Deuteronomy 6:4 is the Jewish profession of faith.  The Christian creed recited at Sunday Mass is quite long compared to this single verse.  But for us Christians, everything contained in our creed is rooted in this single verse:  the bedrock of monotheism.

Deuteronomy 6:5, then, builds upon the former verse.  Given the truth of the former, the latter is a command, a call to action that flows as a consequence from the truth of authentic monotheism.  The Lord God, being who He is, calls for our complete love.  He calls for love from our whole self:  heart, soul and strength.

The Transfiguration of the Lord [B]
Daniel 7:9-10,13-14  +  2 Peter 1:16-19  +  Mark 9:2-10

We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.

In today’s account of the Transfiguration, we have a miniature of the entire Gospel and a miniature of the way that God has always made His Divine Revelation known.  God, like any loving parent, wants us to share in His love.  But at the same time He wants us to enter into that love as freely as possible.  In other words, God wants us to come to Him of our own accord, because the more freely we come to Him, the more we grow in His love.

But as a loving parent, God knows we are often weak and need His help.  God gave us an intellect by which we could of our own power reason that God exists, that He loves us, and that He wants us to imitate that love.  God also gave us a free will by which to imitate Him.  Our human intellect and will are often very weak, however, and so God constantly gives us signs of His presence, in order to remind us of Who God is and how much He loves us.

God did not have to inspire the human authors of Scriptures, but He did so in order to give us a record of His love.  God did not have to choose twelve men to be his apostles, in order to share the Sacraments of His love, but He did so to strengthen us in this earthly life of ours, because we face so many setbacks, failures, and disappointments.  God the Son was transfigured before the eyes of these three apostles not simply so that they could say, “How good it is for us to be here.”

The Transfiguration occurred so that the apostles would hear the voice of God the Father:  “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to Him.”  They do listen to Him.  What is it that He chooses to state next?  Coming down the mountain, Jesus points the apostles’ attention ahead to the Cross, to His death.

As we share in the Eucharist—the offering of Christ’s self-sacrifice on the Cross—God our loving Father nourishes us with the life of His Son.  Here is a further transfiguration:  the death of Jesus on the Cross into the Resurrected Lord, so that the giving of our lives might mean the receiving of God’s life.

The Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
I Kings 19:4-8  +  Ephesians 4:30-5:2  +  John 6:41-51

“… the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

At the start of John 6, as we heard two Sundays ago, “the people … were going to come and carry [Jesus] off to make Him king” because of the miraculous signs that He worked.  By contrast, today’s Gospel Reading is where John 6 turns south.  This is where the crowds begin their murmuring against Jesus.  They begin raising objections to His claims.  This is the murmuring and objecting that will lead to most of the crowd abandoning Jesus by the chapter’s end, as we will hear two Sundays from now.

At the very beginning of today’s Gospel Reading, “The Jews murmured against Jesus because He said, ‘I am the bread that came down from Heaven’”.  Their reason for murmuring is not so much that Jesus is simply claiming to be some sort of “bread”.  They seem to accept that claim of Jesus as an innocent sort of metaphor:  someone who is bread offers nourishment, somewhat like a parent in our own day being called a “breadwinner”.  Jesus calling Himself bread seems just a metaphor, so that’s not what bothers the Jews.

Instead, when Jesus declares “I am the bread that came down from Heaven”, what really bothers the Jews is that Jesus is claiming to come down from Heaven.  They murmur:  How can this be when we know his father and mother?  He’s one of them, not someone sent down from Heaven.  But Jesus does not bother long responding to this concern.

Jesus moves forward by doubling down on His real claim, which has at this point passed right over the crowd’s heads.  More important than the fact that He’s come down from Heaven is the question of who He is.  Towards the end of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus gives us three answers to the question of who He is.

Jesus first declares, “I am the Bread of Life.”  Then He describes Himself as “the bread that comes down from Heaven so that one may eat it and not die.”  Third, Jesus calls Himself “the living bread”.  In all three answers, Jesus explains that He is not just nourishment.  He hasn’t just come down from Heaven in order to fill stomachs.  It’s not bread for the stomach, but bread for the soul.  Jesus is a bread that offers a life that’s stronger than death.

Then Jesus reveals the awesome Mystery of His identity further.  In the very last phrase of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus stakes the claim that makes or breaks His disciples.  He claims not just that He is bread, and not just that as bread He gives a life stronger than death.

Jesus declares:  “the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”  Jesus is not just “bread”.  He is not just “food for the hungry”.  Jesus is not just bread that offers life.  Jesus is not just bread that strengthens you to survive death.  Jesus is the divine Word made Flesh, and His Flesh is the bread that He “will give for the life of the world.”  This is the heart of John 6.

His Flesh is bread.  Jesus’ sermon on the Bread of Life makes clear just how radical the Holy Eucharist is.  The Sacrament of the Eucharist is not just a symbol or sign.  The Sacrament of the Eucharist is the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, the divine Word made Flesh.

Those who murmured when Jesus said that He had come down from Heaven are going to murmur even worse against this claim of Jesus:  that the bread that He will give is His Flesh.  Of course, you can read the rest of the story by taking your Bible and reading the whole of John 6.  This would be especially helpful this year, because next Sunday the passage from John 6 that we would usually hear will be displaced by the August 15^th celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption.

Jesus gives us His flesh in order to give us life in this fallen world.  This is the life that is divine, which is to say that it’s self-sacrificial.  Jesus offers us this life in the Holy Eucharist.  Jesus asks us to live in daily life with the depth of self-sacrifice that He offered on the Cross.  The strength to live such a life of self-sacrifice comes from this very Bread of Life.

Thursday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Numbers 20:1-13  +  Matthew 16:13-23
August 5, 2021

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Today’s Gospel passage is well-known for revealing Jesus’ intention of founding His Church on the rock of faith, personified both in the individual Simon Peter, and in the office of the papacy.  What sometimes is overlooked is what immediately follows.  These latter verses also reveal something important about the Church, about the office of the papacy, and about the men who hold that office.

When Jesus “began to show His disciples that He must” suffer and be killed, the newly appointed Peter begins to “rebuke” Jesus!  The word “rebuke” is not a soft one.  But Jesus immediately and forcefully corrects Peter, revealing to us that Peter’s office does not pertain to the personal concerns, insights or doubts of him who holds the office.  Nor is the officeholder of the papacy unable to err.

Peter’s error here counters the profession of faith that he had made, after which Jesus named him “Peter”.  Jesus at that point praised Peter’s confession of faith, and pointed out to him something key by stating:  “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father”.  Contrast these words with what Jesus says following Peter’s scandalous rebuke:  “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do”.

This contrast between the divine and the human is heard in the juxtaposition of Peter’s confession of Jesus and Jesus’ rebuke of Peter.  Peter’s confession is of Jesus’ divinity.  But Peter is rebuked because he refuses to accept Jesus’ humanity as the means of Jesus’ mission.  Each of us needs to accept Jesus’ mission of offering His Body and Blood on the Cross.  Through this mission, Jesus will fully offer divine life to those of us who place our faith in Him.

St. John Vianney, Priest
Numbers 13:1-2,25—14:1,26-29,34-35  +  Matthew 15:21-28
August 4, 2021

“Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”

When the Israelites entered the Promised Land after the Exodus, they met up with the Canaanites, whom they considered to be wicked and godless, a race of people that they should exterminate.  This outlook persisted until the time of Jesus.  In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus explains that this outlook cannot be held by His followers.

The woman in the Gospel passage is a Canaanite.  She had enough faith in Jesus to ask Him to release her daughter from a demon.  But then Jesus says a shocking thing to the woman:  “It is not right to take the food of the sons and daughters and throw it to the dogs.”  These words do not represent Jesus’ own thoughts, but we see—because of the response that Jesus draws out of the woman, and because of Jesus’ action in reply—the lesson that Jesus has for His followers.

In the midst of our culture today, Jesus says to us, “Love is not exclusively for those who are dear to us.”  Jesus teaches that we must love those we may consider enemies, and pray for those who persecute us.

Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Numbers 12:1-13  +  Matthew 14:22-36 [or Matthew 15:1-2,10-14]
August 3, 2021

“Those who were in the boat did Him homage, saying, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’”

Very unusually, on this weekday in Ordinary Time the Church provides two options for the day’s Gospel passage.  The following reflection is based upon the former option.

The Church bears a rich treasury of interpretation of Sacred Scripture.  By that I don’t simply mean that the Church has accumulated many different, though equally insightful, interpretations of Scripture from the writings of her many members (although that’s true).  The Church’s treasury of Scripture interpretation is based upon a four-fold view of the Holy Bible.

The first view of the Bible looks at the literal meaning of a Scripture passage.  In the case of today’s Gospel passage, for example, the literal meaning of the passage is an historical event involving Jesus interacting with His disciples, and miraculously walking on water.  One could write a long and spiritually fruitful essay solely about the literal meaning of this passage.

However, the other three views of Scripture consider different “spiritual senses” of a given passage.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that the literal meaning doesn’t deal with spiritual matters.  But the three spiritual senses of Scripture relate the literal meaning to a broader meaning that the passage doesn’t directly touch upon.

For example, at the end of today’s Gospel passage, those who were in the boat did Jesus homage, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”  Above and beyond the literal meaning of this event, one can “see” the boatful of disciples confessing the divinity of Jesus as symbolizing the Church Militant (that is, the Church on earth).  Around this basic symbol are several complementary symbols:  for example, the water on which the boat rests, and the weather surrounding the boat, as the turbulent world in which the Church Militant lives; and the confession of faith as a symbol of the Sacred Liturgy of the Church which receives Jesus into the Church’s “boat”.

It is easier to ponder the literal sense of Scripture than the three spiritual senses.  But with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the examples of the Church’s saints, the three spiritual senses of Sacred Scripture invite us into rich theological waters.