Pentecost Sunday B
(Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time B)
(June 4) Today let us think of St. Francis Caracciolo and St Kevin (Saints)
Today: Acts 2:
1-11;
Psalm 104: 1, 24,
29-31, 34; Corinthians 12:
3-7, 12-13 or Galatians 5:
16-25;
Gospel:
John 20:
19-23
or John 15: 26-27;
16: 12-15
“Something appeared to them that
seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the
head of each of them.” (Acts of the
Apostles 2:1-11)
The religion revealed by God is a religion of great hope. We are
told in the Acts of the Apostles that when St Paul was taken to Rome
and held under house arrest there, he invited the Jewish leaders in
Rome to his home. He told them that it was because of the hope of
Israel that he was being held in captivity. That reference to the hope
of Israel gave expression to a distinguishing feature of the religion
which God had revealed. It was a religion which looked forward to great
things that God would do for man in the future. He would establish his
kingdom, his rule, and this would answer man’s deepest longings. Now,
the Scriptures pointed to two blessings which the coming of God's
kingdom would involve, firstly the Messiah, and secondly the
Spirit of God.
In the Old Testament there was a pattern in the saving
actions of God for his people. Firstly, he raised up specially chosen
people who acted with his power and aid. We think of the patriarchs
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We think of great leaders and kings Moses,
certain of the Judges, King David and certain other kings.
We think of
the great prophets, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel. Well,
the great one who was coming would be all of these and far more. He
would be
the anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ. But as well as this, there
is a second feature in the pattern of God’s saving activity. Those
great figures of the Old Testament did what they did by the power of
the spirit of God that had been given to them. Moses was great because
he had been given the spirit of Yahweh, as had King David and the great
prophets. Now just as a Messiah had been promised, so too it was
promised that this same spirit of God, active in the great men of the
Old Testament, would be poured out on mankind. This was the other
glorious side to the hope of Israel. The prophet Joel, speaking the
word of God, had said, “I will pour out my spirit on all mankind...
Even on the slaves, men and women, will I pour out my spirit in those
days.”
In the fulness of time it was revealed that the two
expectations were intimately connected. When our Lord was baptized in
the
Jordan by John the Baptist the Holy Spirit came upon him in the form of
a dove. The upshot? The Spirit led our Lord out into the desert to
engage in
conflict with Satan. John the Baptist pointed our Lord out to his
disciples, saying of him that he would baptize the people with
the Holy Spirit. As with his Incarnation and the beginning of his
ministry, so too throughout his public ministry up to and including his
Passion and Death and then on to his Resurrection, our Lord was
constantly acting in the Holy Spirit and by his power. The saving power
of Christ could be said to be the Holy Spirit. God’s plan was revealed
that it is Jesus the Messiah who gives the Spirit of God to
God’s people and to the world. Indeed, Jesus reveals that the Spirit of
God is a distinct person, and indeed like himself, a divine
Person. The two work closely together and with the Father, like three
keys producing a wonderful sound.
Let us remember that our Lord looked to the coming of the Holy
Spirit as the event that would make all the difference to his disciples
and to his work. For nearly three years our Lord strove to bring God’s
chosen people to believe in him. His crucifixion represented the
rejection by the nation’s leaders of the truth to which he bore
witness. His own disciples were left frightened and dispirited. Wherein
lay our Lord’s unshakeable confidence? It lay in the coming of the Holy
Spirit. The divine plan was that when he was glorified he and the
Father would send the Holy Spirit, and this would transform the
Church’s prospects. Accordingly, our Lord told his disciples before he
ascended into heaven that they were to return to Jerusalem to await
what had been promised. Today we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit
on the infant Church and the difference which that coming made. The
Church was born and became God’s witness to the risen Jesus amid
persecution and difficulties. The Church became the body of Christ and
the Temple of the Holy Spirit, a holy people bringing redemption and
sanctification to the peoples of the world.
Let us think today of the Person of the Holy
Spirit, his power and the effect of his presence and action in the
hearts of Christ’s faithful. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit’s time had
come, and has now come. He is the hope of Jesus our Lord, and the hope
of the Church and of all the Church’s members. He is the hope of each
one of us who wish to follow the Master. With the Holy Spirit we can
hope for renewal and holiness. So then, let us entrust ourselves to the
Holy Spirit and resolve to be obedient to his guidance.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading:
Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.702-716
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“You must bear witness as well”
(John
15:
26-27)
Commentary by St
Anthony of Padua (around 1195 – 1231), Franciscan, Doctor of the
Church
(Sermons for
Sundays and the Feasts of the Saints)
Pentecost is a Greek word which means “fiftieth”. This fiftieth day,
celebrated by the Jewish people, is counted from the day on which the
paschal lamb was sacrificed; and that is done, because fifty days after
the exodus from Egypt, the Law was given on the blazing summit of Mount
Sinai. Similarly, in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit came down on
the apostles fifty days after Christ’s Passover and appeared to them in
the form of fire. The Law was given on Mount Sinai, the Spirit on Mount
Zion; the Law on top of the mountain, the Spirit in the Cenacle.
“All the disciples were gathered in one place. Suddenly… there came a
great noise” … As a Psalm says, “There is a stream whose runlets
gladden the city of God.” (Ps 46:5) A great noise accompanied the
coming of the one who came to teach the faithful. Note how this agrees
with what we read in Exodus: “On the morning of the third day there
were peals of thunder and lightning, and a heavy cloud over the
mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the
camp trembled.” (19:16) The first day was the incarnation of Christ;
the second day was his passion; the third day, the Holy Spirit was
sent. This day came: thunder is heard, there was a great noise;
lightning flashed – the apostles’ miracles; a thick cloud – compunction
of heart and repentance – covered the mountain, the people of Jerusalem
(Acts 2:37-38)…
“Tongues as of fire appeared.” Tongues – those of the serpent, of Eve
and Adam, had given death access to this world… That is why the Spirit
appeared in the form of tongues, opposing tongues with tongues, healing
the fatal poison by means of fire… “They began to speak.” That is the
sign of fullness; the full vessel overflows; the fire cannot contain
itself… These diverse tongues are the various lessons that Christ left
us, such as humility, poverty, patience, obedience. We speak in these
various tongues when we give our neighbour an example of these virtues.
The word is alive when the works speak. Let us make our works speak!
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Renew in your own soul the resolution that friend of ours made long
ago: “Lord, what I want is suffering, not exhibitionism.
(The Forge,
no.765)
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What did God create?
Sacred Scripture says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and
the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The Church in her profession of faith
proclaimed that God is the Creator of everything, visible and
invisible, of all spiritual and corporeal beings, that is, of angels
and of the visible world and, in a special way, of man.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.59)
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The
Holy Trinity B
(Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time B)
(June 11) Saint
Barnabas, apostle. Born in the island of Cyprus, he was
one of the first converts in Jerusalem and preached at Antioch. It was
Barnabas who introduced St Paul to the other apostles, paving the way
for the broad apostolate which required the approval of the pillars of
the Church. He became a companion of St Paul and went with him on his
first missionary journey, and took part in the Council of Jerusalem. He
returned to his native land to preach the Gospel and died a martyr to
the faith during Nero’s reign. His name is included in the Roman
Canon. (Saints)
Scripture today: Deuteronomy
4:32-34.39-40; Psalm 33; Romans
8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20
“Baptise them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:16-20)
Prior to the coming of our Lord the chosen people of
Israel had a very notable characteristic among the peoples of the
ancient world. They believed in only one God. The normal thing among
cultures
and people was to believe in many gods, each of whom had a
sphere of influence and a certain level of power. In this, the heavenly
realm of the gods was not unlike the human realm with its
different authorities and powers. There was little or no idea of
the
universe being drawn from nothing at the will of the heavenly powers,
let
alone from a single divine power. The universe was seen not so much as
created but as a given, while being controlled in various ways by
higher powers who themselves had various origins.
In a sense this religious polytheism was to be
expected at least on the
popular level because it harmonised with man’s
experience of human authority and power. Popular religion looked very
much like a projection of human experience. By contrast, when some
ancient thinkers examined and then with good reason rejected these
popular beliefs as untenable, they proposed atheism or agnosticism
instead. A few philosophers gained some notion of a single ultimate
source (eg., Pure Act) but it was largely an abstraction. That is to
say, there was
hardly any instance
of true monotheism, a religious world-view that understood all reality
as
coming from the free decision of one, necessary, unlimited and personal
being. It would
have been so hard to imagine (as it still is) everything we see and
everything we cannot see, including all the heavenly realm that there
may be, coming in all its being and variety from the free decision of
one necessary supreme being.
But this is exactly what was revealed to the chosen people
through the patriarchs and the prophets, and made clear in the gradual
unfolding of the history of salvation. That there is one almighty God
who is the Father and origin of all; that he is all-holy and
all-powerful; that he is rich in mercy and compassion; that he gives us
our life and sustains it constantly; that he commands us to love him
and to live a holy life according to his revealed commandments, all
this is an
astonishing revelation and an immensely novel doctrine in the history
of man’s religions. It was the vocation of the children of Israel to
bear witness to the one all-holy and almighty God in a world
worshipping numerous un-holy and very limited gods. It is obvious, for
instance, that Mahomet in the seventh century after Christ drew
(consciously or unconsciously) on this
notion of the one God of Judaism and Christianity to explain his
own
religious experiences. We ought always treasure this revelation, and
base our lives on it, looking to the one God for everything and
striving to live
for his glory alone. Novel as this was, many elements of this doctrine
of the
one God are theoretically attainable by the natural powers of man’s
mind, even though in fact man only rarely attained the knowledge of
some elements of it.
But
the arrival of Jesus our Lord brought a spectacularly new revelation
far beyond man's powers,
one that our Lord revealed only gradually. That there is only one
all-holy God who calls us to a communion of life with him by leading a
holy life in accord with his revealed commandments, our Lord of course
solemnly reaffirmed. He came to fulfil the teaching of
the Law and the Prophets, not to do away with it. He fulfilled it
by
revealing that the one God is three Persons calling us not just to obey
but to share their divine
life. There is the Father who is the eternal origin of all. He, though,
from all eternity has begotten his only Son. The Son, distinct from the
Father as a Person because he is the Son, is the image of
the Father and has received from the Father all that the Father is in
his divine being. He is therefore the same as the Father not in his
personhood but in his divine being. He is the one God as is the Father.
But there a further revelation.
The Father and the Son are united in limitless love with one another
and this
infinite love is a third divine Person who, being their love, proceeds
forth
from the Father and the Son. He is like the eternal sigh of love
between the Father and the Son, their eternal embrace, and is called
the Holy Spirit by our Lord and by the
sacred Scriptures. Together with the Father and the Son he is
to be adored and glorified. Distinct as a Person, he is the same one
God as is the Father and
the Son, the same in being as them both. God is one in being, three
divine Persons each of whom is the one God.
All this directly involves us. The grandeur of it is that
we are called by our baptism
to share in this life of love between the three divine Persons. Here on
earth we have been granted a share in the life of the holy Trinity. Our
calling is to grow daily in this life by the grace of the Holy Spirit,
requiring of us that we live in faith, and according to the Faith. By
our baptism we are enabled to live as God’s children. So let us today
celebrate who God is, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and what he has done
for us in making us his children and calling us to share in his
holiness both now and hereafter. Let us take all practical steps to
ensure that this dream of God the most holy Trinity, this plan that he
has revealed for each of us both here and hereafter, is fully realized.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading:
The Catechism of
the Catholic Church, no.232-248
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“One
God, one Lord, in the trinity of persons and the unity of their nature”
(Preface of today)
Commentary by St Anthony of Padua (around
1195 – 1231), Franciscan, Doctor of the Church
(Sermons for Sundays and the Feasts of the Saints)
The Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit are of one substance and inseparably equal. Their unity is in
their essence, their plurality in the persons. The Lord openly showed
the unity of the divine essence and the trinity of persons when he
said: “Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit.” He did not say “in the names”, but “in the name”, by
which he showed the unity of essence. But he then used three names in
order to show that there are three persons.
In this Trinity can be found the
supreme origin of all things, perfect beauty, very blessed joy. As
Saint Augustine said in his book on true religion, the supreme origin
is God the Father, from whom all things come, from whom proceed the Son
and the Holy Spirit. The very perfect beauty is the Son, the truth of
the Father, who is not dissimilar to him in anything, whom we venerate
with the Father and in the Father, who is the model for all things,
because everything was made through him and everything relates to him.
The very blessed joy, the sovereign goodness is the Holy Spirit who is
the gift of the Father and of the Son; and we must believe and hold
that this gift is exactly like the Father and the Son.
When we look at creation, we end up
with the Trinity which is of one single substance. We understand one
single God: the Father from whom we are, the Son by whom we are, the
Holy Spirit in whom we are — the Origin to whom we run; the model whom
we follow; the grace which reconciles us.
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There are unmistakable signs of the true Cross of Christ: serenity, a
deep feeling of peace, a love which is ready for any sacrifice, a great
effectiveness which wells from Christ’s own Side. And always — and very
evidently — cheerfulness: a cheerfulness which comes from knowing that
those who truly give themselves are beside the Cross, and therefore
beside Our Lord.
(The Forge,
no.772)
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In what sense
do we understand man and woman as created “in the image of God”?
The human person is created in the image of God in the sense that he or
she is capable of knowing and of loving their Creator in freedom. Human
beings are the only creatures that God has willed for their own sake
and has called to share, through knowledge and love, in his own divine
life. All human beings, inasmuch as they are created in the image of
God, have the dignity of a person. A person is not something but
someone, capable of self-knowledge and of freely giving himself and
entering into communion with God and with other persons.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.66)
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The Body
and Blood of Christ B
(Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time B)
(June 18) Let us also think of St. Elizabeth of Schoenau
(Saints)
Scripture: Exodus 24:
3-8; Psalm 116: 12-13,
15-18;
Hebrews 9: 11-15; Mark 14:12-16.22-26
“He broke it and gave it to them,
‘Take it,’ he said ‘this is my body.’ Then he took a cup...’.”
(Mark
14:12-16.22-26)
We have all heard it repeatedly taught that
the Eucharist is the summit and the source of life in Christ for each
of us and for the entire Church. I suspect that for many Catholic
people it takes a long time to realize this truth because we all tend
to live by sight rather than by faith. That is to say, because the Holy
Eucharist is a still, small object to human sight and consequently has
only a moderate visual impact, we unconsciously tend to give it only a
moderate importance. Let us compare our sense of the importance of the
Holy Eucharist with our appreciation of the importance of other things.
Take the matter of having a job. Imagine if there were no unemployment
benefits and a person were to lose his job or were unable to find one.
Would not this be viewed as an immensely serious loss, because how
would he then live? But what of the Eucharist, which our Lord said is
our bread from heaven, such that if we do not eat of it we will die,
die in a supernatural and eternal sense? On this feast of the Body and
Blood of Christ we ought ask ourselves to what extent we are hungering
after Jesus himself, and whether we really do recognize that here on
earth Jesus in the first instance is the Eucharistic Jesus. There is a
danger that a person who even comes to Mass every Sunday may not be
very interested in the Holy Eucharist. Our feast today is the
opportunity to pray for the grace to grow in our appreciation of the
Eucharist, which is the heart of our faith and of the life of the
Church.
St John tells us in his Gospel that Christ taught the doctrine of
the Eucharist in the synagogue at Capernaum. He taught that his flesh
would be real food and his blood real drink, and that if a person did
not eat his flesh and drink his blood that person would have no life in
him. As a result, many of his disciples left him. So it has often been
ever since, because this doctrine can only be accepted on the word of
Christ and not on what we can see or reason out for ourselves. I think
the danger for the practising Catholic who comes to Mass each Sunday is
not that he will formally reject the doctrine, but that he will have a
casual attitude to it, which means he will not regard the Eucharistic
Jesus very seriously. He will walk past or drive past the church
without even thinking of the presence of Jesus, or live out his week in
the vicinity of the parish church without thinking of the presence of
Jesus and without making anything like a spiritual communion with him.
He will tend not to think much of the presence of Jesus in the
tabernacle even when he is inside the church, but think of other things
he can actually see or hear. For instance, there will not be a hushed,
prayerful silence before the tabernacle, but talk and plenty of
distraction. He may leave early before Mass finishes. He might rarely
think of coming to Mass more often than
the minimum of each Sunday. That is to say, he will accept in
theory the centrality of the Eucharist when it is mentioned in a homily
and would never dream of denying it, but the danger is of not having a
vivid realization of its truth. This profound appreciation is what he
has to acquire and deepen as time goes on. As with every truth of the
faith it will require more prayer, spiritual reading and reflection. It
will require an exercise of faith.
The Eucharist is Jesus himself (Mark
14:12-16.22-26). For this reason it is the Church’s
greatest treasure and a principal reason for being a Catholic. Now,
together with his very own person, Jesus in the Eucharist makes present
the greatest act ever done for man and for each of us, namely what our
he did at Calvary. He makes present the giving of himself in
perfect obedience to the Father on our behalf, that very same act of
self-offering that he made at Calvary. The circumstances of course are
different — there are no hammer blows and no actual nailing up on the
Cross — but the essential act of Christ’s person on that occasion, the
essential thing he did, is the same. It is not repeated because it was
of infinite value. No, it is the same and is made present here and now
at Mass. That unique act of self-offering at Calvary and continually
present now in heaven is re-presented to us at Mass
so that each of us can become part of it and one with it. In uniting
ourselves with our Lord in the Eucharist we receive
into our hearts and souls the redeeming and sanctifying fruits of his
sacrifice of himself at Calvary. Jesus gives himself to us, we are
taken up into him, and in the process we receive a marvellous share in
the life of God which is the fruit of the sacrifice of Calvary. So let
us pray for the grace to realize this and to make the Eucharist the
summit and source of our Christian life.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading:
The Catechism of
the Catholic Church, no.1333-1344
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Adoring the Body of Christ: by St John Chrysostom (345 –
407), Bishop and Doctor of the Church
(Homilies on the 1st
Letter to the Corinthians, no. 24,4)
In order to draw us towards loving him more, Christ gave us his body as
our food. So let us go to him with great love and fervour… The magi
adored this body when Jesus lay in a manger. These pagans, these
foreigners left their homeland and their house, set out on a long
journey in order to adore him with fear and trembling. Let us at least
imitate these foreigners, we who are citizens of heaven…
You yourselves no longer see him in a manger but on the altar. You no
longer see a woman holding him in her arms, but the priest who is
offering him, and the Spirit of God, with all his generosity, is
gliding above the offerings. You not only see the same body that the
magi saw, but in addition you know his power and his wisdom, and after
all the initiation to the mysteries that was given you with precision,
you are not ignorant of what he accomplished. So let us awake, and let
us awaken in us the fear of God. Let us show much more piety for the
Body of Christ than these foreigners did…
What is offered on this table strengthens our soul, gathers together
our thoughts, upholds our assurance. It is our hope, our salvation, our
light, our life. If we leave the earth armed with this sacrament, we
shall enter the sacred courts with confidence… But why speak of the
future? Already in this world, the sacrament transforms earth into
heaven. So open heaven’s doors… and then you will see what I have just
said. I will show you here on earth what is most precious in heaven.
What I am showing you is neither the angels nor the archangels nor the
heaven of heavens, but him who is their master.
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To find the Cross is to find Christ.
(The Forge,
no.779)
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How should we understand the reality of
sin?
Sin is present in human history. This reality of sin can be understood
clearly only in the light of divine revelation and above all in the
light of Christ the Saviour of all. Where sin abounded, he made grace
abound all the more.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.73)
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Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(June 25) Today let us think of Blessed Jutta of Thuringia
(Saints)
Scripture today:
Job
38:1.8-11; Psalm 107: 23-26, 28-31; 2
Corinthians 5:14-17; Mark 4:35-41
“‘Master, do you not care? We are
going down!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind.”
(Mark
4:35-41)
Today’s Gospel account of the disciples caught up in the storm
reminds us that there are
many situations in life which cause powerful
reactions within us. A wife or mother loses her spouse or child,
causing a profound emotional reaction that lasts for years to
come. A person has some physical condition that causes
concern and the
results of the test are bad, or perhaps they are very good. The
reaction to the result either way is deeply felt. We are all aware of
what we might call our passions, our deeper or stronger feelings. Story
after story in the literatures of the world, be they in poems, drama or
novels, speak of the passionate friendship between man and woman, a
friendship at times good and even holy, at times evil and sinful.
One’s
work in life and all that touches on it can involve deep feelings,
passionate emotions. It could be a work of scientific discovery, or
developing a business, or designing a work of architecture, or
educating one’s children, or making peace between parties in conflict,
or political action. Or again, think of the feelings a person has when
his work is stolen by someone and that person gets the credit.
God has given us deep and at times powerful feelings, and the
deciding issue in how we feel about anything is where our heart lies,
which is to say what or who we really love. If one profoundly loves and
desires something or someone, one’s emotions will be part and parcel of
that love, just as they will be of any hate. Emotions and feelings are
part and parcel of the heart of man, and he is called to give his whole
heart to God and to all that is good. Fear or anger will be the
response to the prospect of losing what one loves. I remember years ago
a young boy who refused to go to the local Catholic School because he
feared what his companions of his own age in the street where he lived
would think and say to him. Fear was a powerful feeling in him. At this
point of time the World Cup is in progress in Germany. The reactions to
the games are passionate. These passionate feelings we have are part of
our human psyche and we must gain a Christian understanding of
them and in that light integrate them into our Christian life.
Our Gospel passage
(Mark 4:35-41) prompts
us to consider this matter, because the disciples found themselves in a
situation which aroused in them profound emotions. They were out in the
middle of the Sea of Galilee and were terrified at the storm which
seemed about to engulf them. Jesus was in their midst, but sound
asleep. We could regard the storm itself as not only the cause but also
a great symbol of the
emotional storm that was going on within their minds and hearts. But
there was another element in our scene that is full of symbolism too.
They were not
alone in the storm, for Jesus was there in their midst, silent and
asleep yet fully in command. Jesus is the reference point for
all that deeply moves us.
God created us to know and love what is good, above all the
supreme good which is himself. He wants us to love himself and all that
is good ardently and passionately. That is why he gave us what are
called our passions. Of themselves they are neither good nor evil. They
provide strength to our choices and totality to our response. The
important thing is our deliberate choice, what we deliberately desire
or consent to. Our passions and emotions are
meant to be ordered by right judgment, and thus ordered, are to give
vitality
and power to our choice and desire for God and all that God wants.
When our Lord said that the first commandment is to love
God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, he was including in
the word “strength” our passions and emotions. He wants us
to love God passionately, with all our being.
What we are talking about is the human heart knowing and loving
with all its various powers. The model for the human heart is the
heart of Christ. We should aim to put on the mind of Christ and by the
grace of the Holy Spirit to live in him and to be more and more like
him at the level of the heart. God’s plan is that by being devoted to
the heart of Christ, which is to say to the mind and heart and soul and
entire inner person of Christ, we will by God’s grace come to be like
him at
that deepest level. Just as Christ our Lord was in his entire inner
life wholly surrendered to the will of his heavenly Father with all his
mind, heart and strength, so ought this be our ideal. It is God’s ideal
for us, and if we work perseveringly at it, by his grace it will be.
Let us guard our emotions and direct them to the love of God and
the fulfilment of his will, denying them any satisfaction that involves
drawing us into sin. Let us always remember that whatever be the storm,
Christ with all his divine power is nearby awaiting our faith.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading:
Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1762-1770
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Then he asked them, “Why are you so terrified?
Do you not yet have faith?”
(Mark
4:35-41)
Comment of an ancient Greek
homily (wrongly attributed to Origen (185 – 253), Priest and
Theologian
His disciples drew near to him, woke him and said: “Help, Lord, we are
perishing!” … O blest, o true disciples of God, you have the Lord your
Saviour with you and you are afraid of danger? Life is with you, and you
are worried about your death? You wake from his sleep the Creator who
is present with you, as if even asleep, he could not calm the waves and
stop the storm?
What answer do the beloved disciples give to that? We are very small
children who are still weak. We are not yet strong men… We have not yet
seen the cross. The Lord’s passion, his resurrection, his ascension
into heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, have not yet
given us solidity… The Lord is right to tell us: “Why are you so
terrified? Why are you lacking in faith?” Why are you lacking in
strength? Why this lack of trust? Why so little recklessness when you
have Trust with you? Even if death were to irrupt, should you not bear
it with great constancy? In all that happens, I will give you the
necessary strength, in every danger, in every trial, including the
soul’s departure from the body… If in dangers my strength is necessary
in order to bear everything courageously, how much more necessary is it
in the presence of life’s temptations so as not to fall!
Why be troubled, you people of little faith? You know that I am
powerful on earth; why don’t you believe that I am also powerful over
the sea? If you acknowledge me as true God and the Creator of
everything, why don’t you believe that I have power over all I have
created? “He awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea: ‘Quiet! Be
still!’ The wind fell off and everything grew calm.”
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It’s true: when the Holy Cross comes into our lives it unmistakably
confirms that we are his, Christ’s.
(The Forge,
no.787)
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What is the meaning of the name
'Jesus'?
Given by the angel at the time of the Annunciation, the name “Jesus”
means “God saves”. The name expresses his identity and his mission
“because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Peter
proclaimed that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by
which we can be saved” (Acts 4:12).
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.81)
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Thirteenth
Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(July 2) Today let us think of the Servant of God Bernard of Quintavalle
(Saints)
Scripture: Wisdom
1:13-15;2:23-24; Psalm 30: 2-6, 11-13; 2
Corinth 8:7.9.13-15; Mark 5:21-43
For those who knew and loved our Lord, he was the great
reality of their life. St Paul wrote in one of his Letters that “for me
to live is Christ”, and that is what our Lord’s true disciples came to
see. They came to see that our Lord is everything. Being not only man
but God and therefore the source of divine life, he is the object of
our heart’s desire, the one we have been created to love and serve. The
fundamental issue of life is whether we recognize this, and whether,
day by day, we seek him out and live with him where he is to be found
in the life of the
Church.
In our Gospel today (Mark 5:21-43) the
people sought him out to gain from him the blessings of God’s life.
First the synagogue official approached him to save his daughter,
believing that he could certainly do this. Then the woman who had
suffered from an illness secretly approached him and touched his cloak,
believing that if she did so power would go out from him to heal her. A
wonderful healing followed. Then news came that the official’s daughter
had died, but our Lord assured him not to fear, only to have faith.
Then he proceeded to raise the girl from the dead. The power of our
Lord was very real and tangible. Wherever our Lord went, there went the
merciful power of God with him. These were signs of a great fact, that
Christ is the answer to all our needs. All our life we need to be
approaching him and being with him where he is to be found. His
person is our all.
Just as in our Lord’s day, so too in our own, this requires
faith. A great number saw our Lord, gazed on him and heard him all the
while regarding him as a great and good person, a man of God, one with
extraordinary powers for good. But they got no further than that. They
did not attain to faith. We too are in danger of looking on our Lord as
a great figure in history and for men of today, but in a spirit of
faith we must come to believe in him as our all. Above all with a
lively faith we need to recognize him where he is to be approached and
found. He lives and acts above all in the life of the Church of which
he is the head. We can identify more exactly just where he is present
and acting in the life of the Church. He lives and acts in the
Sacraments and in the preaching and teaching of his word. Especially
does he live and act in the Sacraments. This is a distinctive feature
of Catholicism. As we think of our Gospel passage today portraying the
powerful deeds of our Lord bringing the mercy of God to broken man, let
us think of the presence of the same Jesus now in the Sacraments,
exercising in their administration his ministry of bringing the power
and the mercy of God to those in need, which is each of us.
When we approach the Sacraments we are like that woman in the
Gospel of today reaching out and touching the hem of his cloak. He is
there and his power goes out to us. It is very important that we
cultivate a careful and faith-filled understanding of the Sacraments.
If we do not we shall regard them simply as ceremonies, or occasions
when we come together to pray and gain some spiritual benefit from God,
or simply religious symbols (the classic Protestant tendency), or
whatever.
In each of the seven Sacraments it is the living risen Jesus who is
present and
acting in the power of the Holy Spirit. He comes to us in the tangible
actions and the material elements of the Sacrament which signify not
only
his presence but what he is doing for us and the grace and blessing
that he is conferring.
When we approach the priest to confess our sins and receive the
forgiveness of God for them, we are approaching our Lord who is present
in the priest. What the priest does Christ is doing. We encounter him
just as truly as the woman who encountered our Lord and had her sins
forgiven by him and just as truly as the sick man who was brought to
our Lord had his sins forgiven by him.
Because our Lord is present in the Church as the Church’s head,
the Sacraments are not only the presence and actions of Christ, but
also of the Church. In receiving the Sacraments we become united to
Christ and the Church as well. We benefit from the prayer of Christ and
also from the prayer of the Church which lives in him who is her head.
There is this wonderful feature of the Sacraments also that, provided
the minister of the Sacrament does what the Church says must
essentially be done, Christ will infallibly be there doing what the
Church teaches is signified by the Sacrament. Thus it is that we are
always sure that at
Mass Christ is present offering himself to the Father on our behalf and
drawing us into union with him in Holy Communion. We are certain of it — Christ’s presence does not depend on the degree and power of the
priest’s own
piety. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation we are always be sure that
Christ is there actually forgiving our sins. It will not depend on the
holiness of the priest and on the particular charism that happens to
accompany his prayer. At Baptism and Confirmation we are always be
sure that Christ is there giving to us a share in the Holy Spirit with
the gifts that come with this Gift.
As we think of our Gospel today recounting the presence and
power
of Christ among the people, let us appreciate anew his presence, his
action, and his power among us in the life of the Church his body, but
above all in the Sacraments which are his, and the Church’s, principal
actions.
E.J.Tyler
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1113-1130
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He took the child by the
hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means "Little girl, arise!"
(Mark
5:21-43) Comment by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
[Pope Benedict XVI] (Der Gott Jesu Christi)
“You will not abandon my soul to the
nether world.” (Ps 16:10) This word of Scripture is fulfilled in Jesus
by the fact that he rose on the third day, before decomposition began.
Jesus’ new death led to the tomb, but not to corruption. It is the
death of death… This triumph over the power of death precisely where
death seems irrevocable is a very important point in biblical
testimony…: the power of God, who respects his creation, is not tied to
the law of creation’s death.
Certainly, death is the fundamental
form of the world as it is at present. But today as always, human
beings aspire and seek to triumph over death, its real and not just
thought suppression. The resurrection of Jesus tells us that this
triumph is really possible, that neither in its origin nor in an
irreversible way was death part of the structure of what was created,
of matter… In addition, it tells us that the triumph over the
limitations of death is impossible to attain by means of perfected
clinical methods. This triumph exists only because of the creative
power of the Word of God and of Love. Only these powers are strong
enough to change the structure of matter in such a radical way that the
barriers of death become surmountable…
Faith in the resurrection is a
profession of faith in God’s real existence and a profession of faith
in God’s creation, in the unconditional “yes” that characterizes God’s
relationship to creation and to matter… This is what allows us to sing
the Easter Halleluia in the midst of a world over which hangs the
threatening shadow of death.
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You were very hurt at being slighted.
That means you are forgetting too easily who you are.
(The Forge,
no.794)
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What does the Council of
Chalcedon (in 451) teach in regard to Jesus being God and man?
The Council of Chalcedon teaches us to confess “one and the same Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in his humanity, true God and true man,
composed of rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father by
his divinity, and consubstantial with us by his humanity, “like us in
all things but sin” (Hebrews 4:15), begotten from the Father before all
ages as to his divinity, and in these last days , for us and for our
salvation, born of Mary, the Virgin and Mother of God, as to his
humanity.”
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.88)
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Fourteenth
Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(July 9) (Saints)
Scripture today:
Ezechiel
2:2-5; Psalm 123: 1-4;
2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6
“And they would not accept him .... He
was amazed at their lack of faith.” (Mark 6:1-6)
Our Gospel passage today makes it very clear just what the
problem was with our Lord’s own townspeople when he went back to them
after having begun his public ministry. We are told that with the
coming
f the Sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue and most of
them were astonished at the wisdom he displayed and at the miracles he
had been working elsewhere. But in their hearts they refused. “This is
the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary,” the one whose family and
relatives we know so well. That is to say, he is no more than what we
have always thought him to be. “And they would not accept him.” Behind
this judgment of their mind about our Lord and what he was saying was a
refusal of the will to believe. Our Lord himself, we are told, was
amazed at their lack of faith (Mark 6:1-6), and his very amazement implies that in
his person they had before them an abundance of incentives and reasons
to believe in him. Yet they refused to move in faith beyond the
appearances and impressions of our Lord that had been theirs all along,
and accept that something far greater was now being revealed. A similar
spiritual challenge is before the men of our day when the Church speaks
the truth of God on behalf of Christ.
This Gospel incident reveals very clearly how important faith is in the
Christian life. Our Lord was amazed at their lack of faith. How then are we to
define faith? “Believing”, St Thomas Aquinas states, “is an act of the intellect
assenting to divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.”
Notice that a "command of the will" is involved in the "act of the intellect".
The people of Nazareth were astonished at what they saw our Lord doing, but they
would not assent to the divine truth he was announcing. The refusal of the mind
to believe and accept the truth which our Lord utters involves an act of the
will and not merely an act of the intellect, and so too does the decision to
accept it. Our Catholic faith involves a personal choice, the choice to believe
in the living person of Jesus and in what he teaches. It is the living person of
Jesus not as seen in the flesh but as he is represented and proclaimed by the
Church his body, which our Lord established and sustains to act constantly in
his name. Just as our Lord accompanied by his disciples went to his home
town and began teaching in the synagogue, so in our day and in every
age the living Jesus continues to teach in the life of the Church his
body and especially in the ministry of the Church’s pastors, and more
particularly in the Church’s chief pastor. It is the same Jesus, only
risen now, who teaches us continually. And just as the townspeople of
Nazareth could have chosen to believe in Jesus in the way his own
disciples who accompanied him did, so too can we. They refused,
and we too can refuse to a greater or lesser extent. If we refuse in
our
hearts to accept this or that teaching of the Church we are refusing to
believe in the word of our Lord. It is an act of the will for which we
are responsible.
But we are not left alone in this most serious of matters. By
our baptism we have been given from God a special capacity, a special
inclination to believe in Jesus and to hope in him and to love him. It
is a gift of the Holy Spirit empowering and sustaining our will in the
direction of belief, and it is called the gift of faith. It is the
foundation of our entire Christian life and it gives us a supernatural
propensity to believe in Jesus and to love him. This God-given
propensity makes it easier, but it does not dispense with the exercise
of our own will. We must still make our personal choice for Jesus and
constantly renew it, even though the Holy Spirit has endowed us with a
spiritual tendency to do so. I suppose we could liken it to the natural
tendency of a child to love his parents, to believe them and to look to
them for what he hopes for. But of course, as time goes on the child
could decide to refuse that faith in them that comes so naturally. So
too in the matter of our faith in Jesus. But in this case it is a
supernatural gift from God that is especially precious. It is the
foundation of holiness.
The fact that faith involves the decision of the will means that
we can be tempted to withhold faith. So we must be on guard against any
temptations against faith that might come through our associations,
friendships, our reading or our viewing. In my view, to read the novel The Da Vinci Code
without a very good reason would be placing ourselves in the occasion
of temptations against faith in this or that doctrine about Christ and
the Church. Let us always bear in mind that in the secret recesses of
our heart we will be invited to believe, or tempted to disbelieve.
We
can assent to either. If we disbelieve it involves the will and will be
a sin against faith, and therefore a very fundamental sin. The Gospels
tells us that our
Lord could not work many miracles there and it was because of their
refusal to believe.
Let us deeply appreciate the gift of our faith, and be ever
guarding and nourishing its growth, and protecting it from anything
that may lessen or corrupt it..
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading:
The Catechism of
the Catholic Church, no.153-165)
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I was deeply impressed by the disarming frankness of that holy and
learned man, by his willingness to yield as well as by his refusal to
give way, when he said “I can come to terms with anything except an
offence against God.”
(The Forge,
no.801)
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“...Born of the Virgin Mary”: Why is Mary truly the Mother of God?
Mary is truly the Mother of God because she is the mother of Jesus
(John 2:1, John 1925). The One who was conceived by the power of the
Holy Spirit and became truly her Son is actually the eternal Son of God
the Father. He is God himself.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.95)
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Fifteenth
Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(July 16) Our Lady of Mount
Carmel. The sacred Scriptures speak of the beauty of Mount
Carmel where the prophet Elijah defended the faith of the people of
Israel in the living God. In the twelfth century (a time of much needed
Church reform) a group of hermits settled there and afterwards set up
the Carmelite Order to lead a contemplative life under the patronage of
the holy Mother of God. (Saints)
Scripture today:
Amos
7:12-15; Psalm 85: 9-14;
Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13
“Jesus summoned the
Twelve and began to send them out in pairs..”. (Mark
6:7-13 )
There is an old saying — and of course it is an exaggeration
— that familiarity breeds
contempt. Its
real point is that we can easily be blind to the value and nature of
the things we are familiar with, and as a result not take full
advantage of our blessings. For instance, members of a family can
easily take their own family for granted and fail to appreciate it. The
same applies to our being citizens of a peaceful and prosperous
country. We can so very easily be lacking in a wholesome wonder for and
understanding of what we continually enjoy.
The same applies to our
membership in Christ’s Catholic Church. It is God’s family and Jesus
our Lord is its living treasure. We, though, can take our membership in
it for granted and as a result not make full use of the blessings which
we enjoy from God. After all, were it not for the providence of
God any one of us could have been born into a non-Catholic or
non-Christian family, or even into a family of a positively atheistic
outlook. In an age marked by astronomical numbers of abortions we might
not have even been born. We ought let this inspire us
to appreciate what the Church really is, and to count our blessings.
In our Gospel passage today (Mark 6:7-13) our
Lord in his public ministry is seen summoning the Twelve and sending
them out in pairs to preach repentance as he had done, and to cast out
devils and heal the sick. So right at the beginning when our Lord was
laying the foundations of his Church, the Church of Pentecost, he was
sending his apostles out. It pointed to his final charge to them just
before he ascended into heaven that they were to go out to all creation
making disciples of all the nations. The Church was to be Catholic,
which is to say ordered to bringing the whole Christ everywhere, and
implanted everywhere.
At the coming of the promised
Holy Spirit at Pentecost establishing the infant Church, the very first
action of the Church in the person of Peter was to preach to the many
nations, and draw into her fold a large body representing those
nations. The Church became Catholic instantly. Consider what happened.
Peter preached to the crowd that had gathered in response to the great
sound of the coming of the Spirit. It was a crowd not made up of Jews
alone but of "devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under
heaven." There were Parthians, Medes and Elamites, people from
Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, Egypt,
Lybia and visitors from Rome. So in preaching to that remarkably
diverse and large group gathered before it, the first thing the infant
Church did was to
fulfil the task our Lord had given it which was to preach Him to the
whole world. More significantly still, about three thousand became
believers. These immediate events confirmed the Church’s vocation to
be Catholic from its beginnings. That vocation was to be everywhere (as
in those newly baptized persons) and to go
everywhere bringing the person of Christ and all his heavenly blessings
to all the nations (as represented by those who had gathered
immediately after the coming of the Holy Spirit).
Beyond what it revealed about
the catholic and missionary character of the Church, the coming
together of
that singularly diverse crowd and its embrace of Christ as preached by
Peter served as a sign of something fundamental about the human race
too and the vocation of every man. It is that all men are called by God
to gather together into this catholic or universal unity of Christ’s
Church. The reason for this is that all mankind is called by God to be,
as St Paul puts it, incorporated into Christ. He is the only Saviour of
the world, the only way to the Father, the way, the truth and the life
for all. Man’s calling is to be in Jesus, to live in him and to become
transformed into his likeness. Now, where is this Christ who is for the
entire world? Christ-for-the-world is present and available in his
Church, the Church Catholic, of which he
is the head. The whole person of Christ, together with all the means he
left for union with him, are to be found in the Church he founded on
the rock of Peter and the Apostles. For this reason mankind has the
vocation to enter into membership of the Catholic and Roman Church and
in this way to
enter into union with Christ our God and Saviour. To understand mankind
we must understand this point. Christ’s Catholic Church is the place
where mankind is intended by God to rediscover its unity and salvation.
Because it is the whole
person of Christ who dominates and vivifies the Church through the
presence of his holy Spirit, and because all mankind is called to enter
into union with Christ who is to be found in the Church his body, the
Church is called to go out to the whole world. In one way or
another, respectfully and in the manner of a dialogue, the Church's
mission is to invite people
to
discover the person of Jesus and their vocation to put their entire
faith in him as their Saviour and their God. Christ’s Church is
Catholic, it is the one Catholic Church everywhere, in union with
Peter. For this reason we who are Christ's faithful and members of his
Church are all called to be apostolic in our
everyday life, sharing in the mission of Christ’s Catholic Church to
bring him to all the nations, both within and beyond our own country.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.830-856
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“Jesus
summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs..”. (Mark
6:7-13 )
Commentary by St Gregory the Great
(around 540 – 604), Pope, Doctor of the Church
(Homilies on the Gospel, 17,1-3)
Dearly beloved brethren, our Lord
and Saviour teaches us sometimes by his words and sometimes by his
actions. His actions themselves are commandments, for when he does
something without saying anything, he shows us how we must act. So here
he is sending his disciples out two by two to preach, because there are
two commandments of love: love of God and of the neighbour. The Lord
sent his disciples to preach two by two to suggest to us without saying
it that the person who does not have love for the other must absolutely
not take on the ministry of preaching.
It is very good that he “sent them
in pairs before him to every town and place he intended to visit.” (Lk
10:1) For the Lord comes after his preachers, because preaching is a
prerequisite: the Lord comes to dwell in our soul when the words of
exhortation have come as a forerunner and have caused us to welcome the
truth in our soul. That is why Isaiah said to the preachers: “Prepare
the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our
God!” (Isa 40:3) And the psalmist also told them: “Prepare the way for
him who rises up to the west.” (Ps 67:5 Vulgate) The Lord rises up to
the west [the lying down of the sun] because in lying down in his
passion, he showed himself in greater glory in his resurrection. He
rose up to the lying down, because in rising, he trampled underfoot the
death that he suffered. Thus, we prepare the way for him who rises up
to the lying down when we preach his glory to your souls, so that when
he comes after, he might enlighten them by the presence of his love.
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I love your Will. I love holy
poverty, my own great Lady. And, now and for ever, I detest and
abominate anything that might mean the slightest lack of attachment to
your most just, most lovable, and most fatherly Will.
(The Forge,
no.808)
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How did God prepare the world for the
mystery of Christ?
God prepared for the coming of his
Son over the centuries. He awakened in the hearts of the pagans a dim
expectation of this coming and he prepared for it specifically through
the Old Testament, culminating with John the Baptist who was the last
and greatest of the prophets. We relive this long period of expectancy
in the annual liturgical celebration of the season of Advent.
(Compendium
of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.102)
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Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(July 23) Saint
Bridget, religious. Born in Sweden in the year 1303, she married
while still a girl and gave birth to eight children whom she brought up
in a religious spirit. She was a member of the Third Order of Saint
Francis, but after the death of her husband she decided to lead a more
ascetical life even though still in the world. Later she founded the
Bridgettine Order and went to Rome where she became outstanding in her
practice of virtue. She wrote many works describing the mystical
experiences she had and went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She died
at Rome in the year 1373. (Saints)
Scripture today:
Jeremiah
23:1-6; Psalm 23: 1-6;
Ephesians 2: 13-18; Mark 6: 30-34
“So they went off in a boat to a
lonely place where they could be by themselves.” (Mk 6:30-34)
Our Gospel passage today describes the scene of our Lord’s
apostles rejoining him and telling him all they had done and taught. He
would have listened carefully to them, praised them, asked them various
questions about what they had done, and corrected them. He was training
them for their future work as the foundation of his Church. Then he
took them off to a lonely place to rest for a while because they were
all extremely busy. The passage tells us that “there were so many
coming and going that the apostles had no time even to eat.”
(Mark 6: 30-34) So
off they went in a boat to a lonely place where they could be by
themselves. Imagine being with our Lord in this situation, going off to
be in his company, to rest and recreate with him, and to hear his words
of life! Being in his company formed them in his way.
That scene is duplicated time and again in our everyday life.
Every day we find ourselves in our work and our busy schedule, and
whether we are very aware of it or not, Christ is with us there.
The work inherent in our vocation and our responsibilities is his work,
work that he is constantly giving us to do. Every day he sends us out
to do it, just as in our Gospel passage he sent the apostles out. Every
day we ought be doing
it with him and then, as it were, returning to him in our prayer and
sharing with him the life we have been living and the work we have
done. The same Jesus of our Gospel scene is with us each day just as he
was with his apostles. As with them so too with us, he asks us to go
apart to be with him for a while. This we ought do every day.
I suggest that you, dear visitor, set aside real time to be with
Jesus. After all, we set aside a little time to have our meals, to do
some
shopping, perhaps to watch the news. The most important thing in our
life is our relationship with Jesus, so what time are we setting aside
for this
each day? There are two aspects of spending time with Jesus, firstly
simply being in his presence, and secondly listening to what he is
saying. More than any other resource, the prayerful reading of the
Scriptures will help us do this for the Scriptures are the word of God.
Soren Kierkegaard once wrote that we ought read the Scriptures as we
would a letter from a dear friend. If this is so for the entire
Scriptures, it is especially so for the Gospels. The
Gospels are the most important parts of the Scriptures because they
present directly before us the person of Jesus and his words. The rest
of the Scriptures comment directly or indirectly, immediately or
remotely, on the person of Jesus. Jesus the Messiah is the heart and
soul of the Scriptures, and their
highest point is the Gospels because
the Gospels speak most directly of him. Our Lord said at the Last
Supper that
to know him and to know the Father whom he reveals, is eternal life. It
is the inspired Scriptures, especially the Gospels, that most help us
know Christ, and through knowing him and listening to his words, the
Father.
Set aside a brief period each day, say ten or fifteen minutes,
to do what the Apostles did, which is to go away with Jesus and be with
him.
In that brief time take up the Gospels and open them. If you have a
daily missal, it could be the
Gospel passage of the Mass of the day. Place
yourself in the presence of our Lord, just as the apostles placed
themselves in his presence and loved to be there. Realize that the same
Jesus is just as truly present to you as he was to them. While you
cannot see him, in fact he is much more present to you than he was to
them because of your baptism and his risen state. Open the page of the
Gospel and place yourself in the scene, knowing that you are in the
presence of our Lord right now. Place yourself there and listen to his
words or watch him in his actions. Contemplate the person of Jesus,
allowing yourself to be filled with the thought of him. In this way, be
with him and gaze with love on the person of Jesus, hearing his words
being addressed to you. Ask him to help you to come to know him, to
come to
love him, and to come to understand what he wants of you. In all of
this know that you are not just placing yourself in the scene of some
past and dead
event. No, you are in the presence of the living Jesus, reading his
letter to you, the Gospels, and in that letter the living Jesus is
speaking of his love for you and what he once did for you and what he
is doing
for you still. Everything you prayerfully read in the Gospels reminds
you of what he is doing now and will do out of love for you in the
future.
St Jerome wrote that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance
of Christ. Make the Gospels and the Scriptures the staple of your
prayer life. I would especially recommend using the weekday or Sunday
readings from Scripture — especially the Gospel readings — to nourish
your union with Jesus. By means of the Scriptures we come to know
Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us resolve to develop a life-long knowledge
and love for the Scriptures so as to come to know and love Jesus
better. The Scriptures can lead us to the heights of sanctity.
(E.J.Tyler)
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"They
hastened there on foot from all the towns and arrived at the place
before them."
(Mark 6:
30-34) Commentary
by Silvan
(1866-1938), Orthodox monk (Writings)
The Lord forgave me a vast number of sins and granted me to know, by
the Holy Spirit, how much he loves men. The heavens are all filled with
wonder at the sight of the Lord made flesh: how he, the Lord the
highest, came to save us, sinners, and how he obtained for us the
eternal rest through his sufferings. My soul does not care about the
earthly realities, but it is attracted there where the Lord is. Sweet
to the heart are the words of the Lord when the Holy Spirit allows the
soul to understand them.
While the Lord lived on earth, a big crowd followed him; for several
days, these men could not separate from him, but forgetting to eat,
they were hungry of listening to his sweet words. The soul loves the
Lord, and everything that prevents him from thinking of God grieves it.
And if already on earth the soul can experience so strongly the
sweetness of the Holy Spirit, how much more will its joy be up there!
O Lord, with what love have you loved your creature! My soul cannot
forget your peaceful and loving look.
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If troubles come, you can be sure
they are a proof of the Fatherly love God has for you.
(The Forge,
no.815)
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In
the Kingdom, what authority did Jesus bestow upon his Apostles?
Jesus chose the twelve, the future witnesses of his Resurrection, and
made them sharers of his mission and of his authority to teach, to
absolve from sins, and to build up and govern the Church. In this
college, Peter received “the keys of the Kingdom” (Matthew 16:19) and
assumed the first place with the mission to keep the faith in its
integrity and to strengthen the brothers.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.109)
--------------------------------(Back
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Seventeenth
Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(July 30) Saint
Peter Chrysologus, bishop and doctor of the Church. Born about
the year 380 at Imola in Emilia, he entered the clerical state and in
the year 424 was chosen to be Bishop of Ravenna (Italy). He looked
after his flock with meticulous care and taught the people with his
sermons and writings. He died about the year 450. (Saints)
Scripture
today: 2 Kings
4:42-44; Psalm 145: 10-11,
15-18;
Ephesians 4:1-6; John 6:1-15
"Then Jesus took the loaves, gave
thanks,
and gave them out to all who were sitting ready; he then did the same
with the fish, giving out as much as they wanted."
(John 6:1-15)
Our Gospel today places before us the scene of our Lord feeding
the large crowds with the five loaves and the two fish. He provided
them with food out of nowhere, as it were. It was a gift from heaven in
which he took a little food made from the earth and human labour and by
his divine power gave nourishment, health and life to the vast
numbers
gathered before him (John 6:1-15).
It was a harbinger of the heavenly
Bread which he would give to his Apostles at the Last Supper and
through them to the Church, and through the Church to mankind. By means
of the heavenly Food which was his body and his blood he would draw us
into his life with the Father. Let us then consider the Holy Eucharist,
and in particular Holy Communion when we partake of this divine
nourishment. By means of it we enter into union with Jesus and during
the
moments of Holy Communion we unite ourselves with him in his prayer to
the Father.
With our Gospel text today pointing to the heavenly Bread that
is
Holy Communion, let us remember another occasion in the
Gospel, when our Lord is portrayed in prayer (Luke
11:1-13). One of his
disciples asked him to teach
them to pray, and he did so. At various times in the Gospel our Lord is
shown at prayer, but the greatest moments of our Lord's prayer here on
earth were those he prayed while hanging on the Cross. It was during
his passion up to the point of his death on the Cross that our Lord was
offering the greatest prayer of his life, and that prayer was his
prayer of self-offering to the Father on behalf of all mankind. He was
bearing the sins of the entire world and expiating for them by his act
of total obedience to the Father. Those few who followed our Lord on
his way to Calvary were observing our Saviour in agony, but it was an
agony that expressed his prayer, the greatest prayer ever offered to
the
Father. He was also teaching mankind that very prayer by his own
example. If we want to know what it is to pray, we ought contemplate
Christ on the Cross.
Where does all this happen in our daily life? Where is it more than
anywhere else that we are with Christ as he prays and as he unites us to himself
in his prayer? Most of all and more than anywhere else this happens whenever we
take part in holy Mass. At Mass we are in the presence of our Lord as he is
praying and instructing us. He gathers us around him when we come to Mass and we
ought be alive to his invisible presence as we gather in the Church. We ought
never be late for Mass, keeping the Master waiting, as it were. Nor ought we
ignore his presence by
engaging in conversation with family and friends in the Church as we
wait for Mass to begin. We are in the presence of Jesus who wishes us
to listen to him and to enter into his prayer to the Father. During the
first half of the Mass, in the readings and the homily, he is
instructing us in his teaching which includes his teaching about prayer
in union with him. So we ought be full of prayerful attention.
But then most of all, in the Eucharistic Prayer our Lord
prays to his heavenly Father on our behalf. At Mass we are in the
presence of Christ during the greatest moment of his life of prayer,
the prayer he offered during his sacrifice on the Cross at Calvary.
That prayer is his prayer of obedience and loving abandonment to the
Father on our behalf, making up for our lack of obedience and lack of
abandonment to the will of the Father. At Mass the sacrifice of Christ
to his heavenly Father at Calvary is made present. That is what is
happening at Mass, and we are not just observers which some of his
disciples were during the actual event. Rather, we are active
participants in Christ’s prayer of self-offering. We are in active
union with him as he prays on our behalf, or at least we ought be.
We participate in Christ’s prayer of self-offering at Mass
not only by our personal attention and prayerfulness during the
Eucharistic Prayer and the Communion Rite, but above all by our
reception of Holy Communion. Holy Communion is the divine Bread from
heaven
to which our Lord pointed when he fed the vast crowds with the few
loaves.
That divine Food is literally himself. It
is an extraordinary thing that the living Jesus in all his human and
divine reality gives himself to us in Holy Communion. It is so easy to
approach Holy Communion viewing simply the appearances rather than,
with a lively faith, the reality. When we receive Holy Communion our
Lord gives himself in his total reality to us, even though all we see
are the appearances of bread and wine. He then unites us to himself in
what he is doing, and what he is doing above all is praying to the
heavenly Father for us and for the whole world in an act of loving
surrender. It is therefore the
privileged moment of prayer in our life. In practice, though, do we
regard it as such?
There is no other moment of prayer equal to the moment of
Holy Communion because we are united with Christ in his prayer. It is
the moment above all when we ought place before our Lord all that we
need, all that we want to say to God, and our whole selves in prayer.
It is
a wonderful practice to remain in prayer for at least ten minutes after
having received holy Communion because during that time our Lord
remains within us in all his Eucharistic presence. If this is
impossible then we ought return home after Mass in genuine prayer with
the Eucharistic Jesus who is still with us. Christ is praying as our
Intercessor before the Father and he takes us into his prayer and all
our intentions. We certainly ought not hurry out before Mass
finishes or during the last hymn. If we do, are we not ignoring that
precious moment of his presence within us when we are able to pray in
union with him? Let us then resolve to treasure the precious moments of
Holy Communion. It is the greatest time for personal prayer because we
are in communion with Christ in his prayer to the Father, just as he
was on the Cross for our sake. Let us not allow it to pass us
by.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1382-1390
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“Jesus took the bread, said the
blessing, and gave it to them” (John 6:1-15)
Commentary by John Paul II
in his Apostolic Letter “Mane Nobiscum Domine”§
15-16
There is no doubt that the most evident dimension of the Eucharist is
that it is a meal. The Eucharist was born, on the evening of Holy
Thursday, in the setting of the Passover meal. Being a meal is part of
its very structure. “Take, eat... Then he took a cup and... gave it to
them, saying: Drink from it, all of you” (Mt 26:26, 27). As such, it
expresses the fellowship which God wishes to establish with us and
which we ourselves must build with one another.
Yet it must not be forgotten that the Eucharistic meal also has a
profoundly and primarily sacrificial meaning. In the Eucharist, Christ
makes present to us anew the sacrifice offered once for all on
Golgotha. Present in the Eucharist as the Risen Lord, he nonetheless
bears the marks of his passion, of which every Mass is a “memorial”, as
the Liturgy reminds us in the acclamation following the consecration:
“We announce your death, Lord, we proclaim your resurrection...”. At
the same time, while the Eucharist makes present what occurred in the
past, it also impels us towards the future, when Christ will come again
at the end of history. This “eschatological” aspect makes the Sacrament
of the Eucharist an event that draws us into itself and fills our
Christian journey with hope.
All these dimensions of the Eucharist come together in one aspect which
more than any other makes a demand on our faith: the mystery of the
“real” presence. With the entire tradition of the Church, we believe
that Jesus is truly present under the Eucharistic species... It is
precisely his presence which gives the other aspects of the Eucharist —
as meal, as memorial of the Paschal Mystery, as eschatological
anticipation — a significance which goes far beyond mere symbol- ism.
The Eucharist is a mystery of presence, the perfect fulfilment of
Jesus' promise to remain with us until the end of the world.
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You told me, in confidence, that in your prayer you would open your
heart to God with these words: “I think of my wretchedness, which seems
to be on the increase despite the graces you give me. It must be due to
my failure to correspond. I know that I am completely unprepared for
the enterprise you are asking of me. And when I read in the newspapers
of so very many highly qualified and respected men, with formidable
talents, and no lack of financial resources, speaking, writing,
organizing in defence of your kingdom ... I look at myself, and see
that I’m a nobody: ignorant, poor: so little, in a word. This would
fill me with shame if I did not know that you want me to be so. But
Lord Jesus, you know how gladly I have put my ambition at your feet ...
To have Faith and Love, to be loving, believing, suffering. In these
things I do want to be rich and learned: but no more rich and learned
than you, in your limitless Mercy, have wanted me to be. I desire to
put all my prestige and honour into fulfilling your most just and most
loveable Will.” I then said to you: don’t
leave this merely as a good desire.
(The Forge,
no.822)
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Did Jesus
contradict Israel’s faith in the one God and saviour?
Jesus never contradicted faith in the one God, not even when he
performed the stupendous divine work which fulfilled gteh messianic
promises and revealed himself as equal to God, namely the pardoning of
sins. However, the call of Jesus to believe in him and to be converted
makes it possible to understand the tragic misunderstanding of the
Sanhedrin which judged Jesus to be worthy of death as a blasphemer.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.116)
--------------------------------(Back
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The
Transfiguration
of the Lord B
(Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)
(August 6) The
feast of the Transfiguration became widespread in the West in
the 11th century
and was introduced tinto the Roman Calendar in 1457 to commemorate the
victory over Islam in Belgrade. Before that, the Transfiguration of the
Lord was celebrated in the Syrian, Byzantine and Coptic rites. The
Transfiguration foretells the glory of the Lord as God, and his
ascension into heaven. It is an anticipation of the glory in heaven,
where we shall see God face to face. We already share in this life,
through grace, in the divine promise of eternal life. (Saints)
Scripture today:
Daniel
7:9-10.13-14; Psalm 97: 1-2,
5-6, 9;
2 Peter 1:16-19; Mark 9:2-10
After
six days Jesus took
Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by
themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became
dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them. Then
Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with
Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, "Rabbi, it is good that we
are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one
for Elijah." He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then a
cloud came, casting a shadow over them; then from the cloud came a
voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." Suddenly, looking
around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them. As they
were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what
they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the
dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising
from the dead meant.
(Mark 9:2-10)
The basic issue for every living person is life
— how to live, how
to live fully, correctly and happily.
Life is what we seek and the
greatest disaster possible is when life is lost or taken away. Our Lord
said once that he had come that we might have life and have it
to the full. This life to the full is a share in his own divine life
which was manifested in glory in the event that we celebrate today, the
Transfiguration. The apostles gazed in wonder at the spectacle of our
Lord transfigured in glory, with Moses and Elijah conversing with him,
and the Father pointing to him as his beloved Son (Mark 9:2-10).
It revealed Our Lord’s divine life and
the glory that he plans to give us.
In respect to glory, the practical question is, when
can we gain a foretaste of this glory and actually share in it? When
are we so united with Jesus
that we can share his life and ask for and gain the graces necessary to
advance on the path to the glory he revealed at the Transfiguration?
The greatest moment is when the Eucharistic Jesus comes to us in Holy
Communion. It is our pledge of glory.
We remember how some time before the Transfiguration our
Lord pointed to himself as the food of life. “I am the bread of life.
He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will
never thirst.” He was referring to himself as the source of true life
as given to us in the Eucharist. The holy Eucharist
is the gift by Jesus of himself. In receiving him we receive a share in
his own
divine life, his life of glory. Just as the ordinary food we eat keeps
us physically alive, enables us to grow stronger, preserves our
strength against illnesses, and has an all-pervasive effect on every
other dimension of our natural life, so receiving the holy Eucharist
has a similar effect in the realm of our union with God and our share
in his life of glory.
The moment in our own life when we most approach that in which
the Apostles were
with our Lord at the Transfiguration is the moment when we receive Holy
Communion. In Holy Communion we receive into our hearts the living
Jesus in all his risen reality, human and divine, body, blood, soul and
divinity. The problem is that all too often we receive Holy Communion
in an unthinking fashion with very little preparation before and during
Mass. How often have we come up the aisle with others to receive Holy
Communion without a lively faith in who it is who is coming to us at
that moment. During the minutes following our Lord’s coming, how often
have we spent the time thinking of other things and only half-heartedly
giving our divine guest the attention we should. So very often Holy
Communion has not been a time of real communion with
Jesus.
If we give our Lord our attention in prayer during
the precious moments of Holy Communion, it will unite us to him in a
wonderful way. Our union with Jesus will increase. If our ambition in
life is to be united to Jesus and to grow in this union with Jesus — and this should be the supreme ambition of each one of us
— then the
moment of Holy Communion is the supreme opportunity for this to
happen. That is the time to ask him to increase his union with us and
to pour out on us his help to enable it to grow.
Furthermore, inasmuch as Jesus came to take away the sin of the world,
our Lord’s coming in Holy Communion will contribute to the cleansing from our
souls of venial sin and its bad effects. Of course the principal moment when our
Lord takes away sin in our life, including venial sin, is during the Sacrament
of Penance, and it is only in Confession that mortal sin is cleansed from our
soul. Nevertheless whenever he comes in Holy Communion he wishes by his grace to
further cleanse us of the various stains and effects of sin. So when we receive
Holy Communion we ought ask our Lord to cleanse us of the vast effects of sin
still present in our life. We cannot imagine the degree to which our many sins
have affected our souls. Holy Communion is the time to ask our Lord to mend what
has been damaged and to reconcile every aspect of our being to God. Moreover, we
ought during Holy Communion ask our Lord to preserve us from sin in the future,
especially mortal sin but also deliberate venial sin. It ought be our
life’s ambition to avoid all deliberate sin, including deliberate
venial sin. It is during Holy Communion that we ought repeatedly seek
the grace for this. If we do this we shall be advancing towards glory.
Holy Communion is the moment of great grace, for it is the
moment of greatest union with Jesus, if we take advantage of it with a
lively faith. It is our pledge of future glory. Whenever we receive
Holy Communion let us imagine ourselves with the Apostles at the
Transfiguration, and the Father telling us to listen to his beloved
Son. Let us never take Holy Communion for granted, but regard it as the
great moment of life, so full of opportunities for our sanctification
and for our future with Jesus in glory.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Contemplate the Face of Christ and
follow Christ transfigured
Commentary by Pope John-Paul
II (Vita
consecrata, 75)
He continually calls new disciples to himself, both men and women, to
communicate to them, by an outpouring of the Spirit (cf. Rom 5:5), the
divine agape, his way of loving, and to urge them thus to serve others
in the humble gift of themselves, far from all self-interest. Peter,
overcome by the light of the Transfiguration, exclaims: "Lord, it is
well that we are here" (Mt 17:4), but he is invited to return to the
byways of the world in order to continue serving the Kingdom of God:
"Come down, Peter! You wanted to rest up on the mountain: come down.
Preach the word of God, be insistent both when it is timely and when it
is not; reprove, exhort, give encouragement using all your forbearance
and ability to teach. Work, spend yourself, accept even sufferings and
torments, in order that, through the brightness and beauty of good
works, you may possess in charity what is symbolized in the Lord's
white garments".
The fact that consecrated persons fix their gaze on the Lord's
countenance does not diminish their commitment on behalf of humanity;
on the contrary, it strengthens this commitment, enabling it to have an
impact on history, in order to free history from all that disfigures it.
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Tell Our Lord that from now on, every time you celebrate Mass or attend
it, and every time you administer or receive the Sacrament of the
Eucharist you will do so with great faith, with a burning love, just as
if it were to be the last time in your life. And be sorry for the
carelessness of your past life.
(The Forge,
no.829)
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Why does Jesus call upon his disciples to
take up their cross?
By calling his disciples to take up their cross and follow him Jesus
desires to associate wit his redeeming sacrifice those who are to be
its first beneficiaries.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.123)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Nineteenth
Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(August 13) Saint
Pontianus pope, and Saint Hippolytus, priest, both martyrs.
Pontianus was ordained Bishop of Rome in the year 231,a nd in the year
235 was exiled by the Emperor Maximinus to Sardinia, together with the
priest Hippolytus. Here he abdicated the papacy. After his death in
Sardinia his body was buried in the cemetery of Callistus, while the
body of Hippolytus was taken to the cemetery on the Via Tiburtina. Both
of these martyrs have been venerated by the Church of Rome from the
beginning of the fourth century.
(Saints)
Scripture today:
1
Kings
19:4-8; Psalm 34: 2-9:
Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51
The
Jews murmured
about him
because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven," and they
said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father
and mother? Then how can he say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" Jesus
answered and said to them, "Stop murmuring among yourselves. No one can
come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him
on the last day. It is written in the prophets: 'They shall all be
taught by God.' Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him
comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is
from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever
believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate
the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes
down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living
bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live
forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the
world." (John
6:41-51)
I have at various times met people who
think that at the end of life we die and that is the finish of all
personal existence. One elderly person I spoke to told me that he
believed that after he died his fate
would be no different from that of
any dog or cat. He would be buried and his existence would end there.
Undoubtedly there are and have been plenty of people who think that
there is no life beyond the grave. But most people in our
Judaeo-Christian culture have been formed to
some extent by the great world religions, and they consequently
accept
(at least notionally) that there is a judgment and a hereafter. They
might accept this, but
not a lot of people truly realize it. A great number live out their
daily lives thinking of this life only and rarely thinking of life
hereafter and how one should be preparing for the judgment of God that
precedes it. All their plans relate to this life, all their efforts,
all their hopes and regrets. They regret not having taken certain
opportunities that would have brought more money or more advantageous
work or greater fame. Very many would never think of regretting having
done
many things that have set them back in terms of an eternity with God.
Our Lord in today’s Gospel refers very explicitly to the
eternity that is coming. “No one can come to me unless he is drawn by
the Father who sent me, and I will raise him up at the last day.” He
will raise us up on the last day. He goes on to make an explicit
connection between his gift of the Eucharist and our eternity in
heaven. “I am the bread of life. ... I am the living bread which
has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live
forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of
the world.” (John
6:41-51) Many people long for their retirement at
the end of years of work, but they never think of longing for heaven.
God means us to long for heaven and he provides for us a constant
pledge of it. That constant pledge, that promise and foretaste of what
is to come, is what our Lord refers to in today’s Gospel, Holy
Communion. Heaven is where we shall see God face to face and be in
union with him forever. Our foretaste of this is Holy Communion.
St Paul tells us that in Christ we receive every heavenly
blessing. In heaven we shall be granted every heavenly blessing because
we shall be with Christ face to face never to be separated from him.
Here when we receive Holy Communion we receive the same Jesus who is
now at the right hand of his Father in heaven. Therefore when we
receive Holy Communion we are receiving a foretaste of all the
blessings of heaven. So one of the things we ought pray to Jesus about
when we receive Holy Communion is heaven and our journey to heaven. At
the Last Supper our Lord himself directed us to think of heaven in
receiving the Holy Eucharist when he said, “I tell you I shall not
drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it
again with you in my Father’s kingdom.” So whenever Mass is celebrated
and whenever we receive our Lord in Holy Communion we ought remember
these words and think of our heavenly banquet with him that this points
to and reminds us of. We ought pray to our Lord about our homeland in
heaven when we receive Holy Communion and pray that we and the others
we care for will reach there. Our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist is
just as real as it is and will be in heaven, but in Holy Communion it
is veiled under other appearances. The same Jesus comes to help us on
our way.
Not only does the time we have with our Lord in Holy Communion
remind us of our personal eternity with him in heaven, it also
ought remind us of the new heavens and the new earth which eventually
we shall see and be part of. The same Jesus who comes in Holy Communion
will come again in glory at the end of time and all of us will be
gathered before him to be judged. No one will escape that day, just as
no one will escape the personal judgment immediately following
death. The same Jesus who comes to us in Holy Communion will be the
Judge of all and the centre and source of all heavenly blessings.
Following this final coming of Christ and his judgment there will be a
new heaven
and a new earth, and all will be new and glorious. This will happen by
the almighty power of God, and we shall be part of this if we are
judged
worthy. If we are not judged worthy, all will be lost. We ought
therefore joyfully
converse with our Lord about these final things and about our eternity
with him when we receive him in Holy
Communion. Holy Communion is a pledge, a promise and a foretaste of our
eventual union with him both following our personal death, and also at
the end of
time when all will be restored, and death will be no more. Holy
Communion is our pledge of future glory.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1402-1405
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"The bread that I will give is my
flesh for the life of the world." (John
6:41-51)
Commentary by Pope
John-Paul II (Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia,
11)
The Church has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not
as one gift – however precious – among so many others, but as the gift
par excellence, for it is the gift of himself, of his person in his
sacred humanity, as well as the gift of his saving work. Nor does it
remain confined to the past, since “all that Christ is – all that he
did and suffered for all men – participates in the divine eternity, and
so transcends all times”(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1085).
When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, the memorial of her
Lord's death and resurrection, this central event of salvation becomes
really present and “the work of our redemption is carried out” (Lumen
Gentium 3). This sacrifice is so decisive for the salvation of the
human race that Jesus Christ offered it and returned to the Father only
after he had left us a means of sharing in it as if we had been present
there. Each member of the faithful can thus take part in it and
inexhaustibly gain its fruits. This is the faith from which generations
of Christians down the ages have lived. The Church's Magisterium has
constantly reaffirmed this faith with joyful gratitude for its
inestimable gift. I wish once more to recall this truth and to join
you, my dear brothers and sisters, in adoration before this mystery: a
great mystery, a mystery of mercy. What more could Jesus have done for
us? Truly, in the Eucharist, he shows us a love which goes “to the end”
(cf. Jn 13:1), a love which knows no measure.
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The objects used in divine worship should have artistic merit, but
bearing in mind that worship is not for the sake of art: art is for the
sake of worship.
(The
Forge, no.836)
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How is the Resurrection the work of the
Most Holy Trinity?
The Resurrection of Christ is a transcendent work of God. The three
Persons act together according to what is proper to them: the Father
manifests his power, the Son “takes again” the life which he freely
offered (John 10:17), reuniting his soul and his body which the Spirit
brings to life and glorifies.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.130)
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Prayers
today: Lord, be true to your covenant, forget
not the life of your poor ones for ever.
Rise up, O God, and defend your cause; do not ignore the shouts of your
enemies.
Almighty and ever-living God, your
Spirit made us your children, confident to call you Father.
Increase your Spirit within us and bring us to our promised
inheritance.
We
ask this through our Lord Jesus
Christ
your Son,
in the unity
of the Holy Spirit, one God forever.
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Twentieth
Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(August 20) Saint Bernard, abbot
and doctor of the Church (1090-1153). Born in France he became a
Cistercian abbot and great preacher. He fought for the peace and unity
of the Church against schism. He wrote many treatises on the Blessed
Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, as well as many works of theology and
asceticism. Obedience and love for the Church was his concern.
(Saints)
Scripture today:
Proverbs
9:1-6; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5,
6-7; Ephesians 5:15-20;
John 6:51-58
“I
am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats
this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my
flesh for the life of the world." The Jews quarrelled among themselves,
saying, "How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?" Jesus said to
them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of
Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats
my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on
the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the
Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who
ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever”.
(John
6:51-58)
God
became man to save the world from sin and death and to
give us life in abundance. The world and man came from the hand of God
alive and destined for life, but as St Paul tells us sin entered the
world through one man and with sin came
death, and death has spread through the whole human race. Our Lord said
that he had come to bring life in abundance, and this comes through
union with him. How then would Christ bring the life of God to mankind
through union with him? It was primarily by means of the Holy Eucharist.
The constant problem is
that we tend to live in
the light of those things we see, feel, hear, taste and smell either on
the large or the small scale. The important things in life therefore
tend to be
material possessions, the influence and control we
manage to acquire, or the pleasure that comes our way. These are
generally judged to be the real things, the things that count for all
practical purposes. Even if we are committed to our Catholic Faith, the
danger is that there will nevertheless be a large part of our heart
given to these more temporal and material things. For the natural
man life consists in what is tangible. To call a life which is not seen
and felt and enjoyed in a material sense an abundant life is viewed as
unreal. In sum, to the extent that we are like
this we tend not to be very interested in what our Lord promises. We
may have some surface interest in it, and if our Lord were to
appear among us we would be very excited, but in terms of having a
great love for the gift he offers we tend to be seriously lacking.
In our
Gospel today
(John
6:51-58) our
Lord pinpoints exactly what will bring us eternal life. Once begun,
natural life is sustained by nourishment, and the same applies to
eternal
life. Christ and he alone is the living food that gives to man life
for ever. When our Lord refers to himself as this food, he means this
literally. Our Lord said quite publicly that “my flesh is real food and
my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives
in me and I live in him.” We may wonder why our Lord in that public
situation did not explain how he would do it, that he would give his
body and his blood as food in a sacramental way and not in a physical
way. After all, as Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to say, he lost the
masses when he taught this doctrine. My supposition is that our Lord
put his doctrine in all its starkness in order to drive home to his
hearers that he would literally be giving his flesh to be eaten and his
blood to be drunk. He wanted this extraordinary doctrine to be taken
very seriously, literally, and in all its newness, even if it meant the
loss of many of
his disciples. I suspect that if
he had explained that he would give them his body and his blood under
the appearances of bread and wine, the bread and wine would have been
widely understood to be symbols
only, and not as literally his body and blood. It was in the privacy of
his Last Supper with his apostles that he showed that he would give his
body and his blood in a sacramental way, under the appearances of bread
and wine.
Apart from the starkness of his doctrine about his being
real
food, Christ makes it clear that it is primarily through and in the
Eucharist that eternal life is given to us throughout our life. The
Eucharist is the source of and the
principal moment in the eternal life enjoyed by each baptised member of
the Church and by the whole Church itself. This is clear from our
Lord’s words in our Gospel today. “As I who am sent by the living
Father myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw
life from me.” Our ongoing Christian life will come primarily from
consuming Christ worthily in the Eucharist. So there is a lot at stake
in participating in Mass and receiving our Lord in Holy Communion and
making the very most of it. Our tendency will be to regard it as
important, yes, but together with many other things. Whereas it is
obvious from our Lord’s words that the Eucharist is the most important
element in
our ongoing Christian life. Nothing compares with it. Mass and Holy
Communion is the most important reason for being a Catholic and indeed
for being a Christian, even though many Christians separated from the
Catholic
Church do not have access to the true Eucharist, and indeed do not
believe in it.
Let us pray for the
grace to appreciate how
central to the Christian life is the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharistic
Jesus is the summit and source of the life of the Church and of the
life of each and all of us. Let us strive to live this truth and to
make it central to our spiritual lives.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1324-1327
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“My flesh is true food, and my blood
is true drink”(John 6:51-58)
Comment by Pope BenedictXVI
(Homily, Eucharistic celebration on World Youth
Day, Sunday, 21 August 2005)
"This is my Body, given in sacrifice for you. This cup is the New
Covenant in my Blood".What is happening? How can Jesus distribute his
Body and his Blood? By making the bread into his Body and the wine into
his Blood, he anticipates his death, he accepts it in his heart, and he
transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply
brutal violence — the Crucifixion — from within becomes an act of total
self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was
accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a
series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of
the world when God will be all in all (cf. I Cor 15: 28).
In their hearts, people always and everywhere have somehow expected a
change, a transformation of the world. Here now is the central act of
transformation that alone can truly renew the world: violence is
transformed into love, and death into life. Since this act transmutes
death into love, death as such is already conquered from within, the
Resurrection is already present in it. Death is, so to speak, mortally
wounded, so that it can no longer have the last word.
This first fundamental transformation of violence into love, of death
into life, brings other changes in its wake. Bread and wine become his
Body and Blood. But it must not stop there; on the contrary, the
process of transformation must now gather momentum. The Body and Blood
of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in
our turn. We are to become the Body of Christ, his own Flesh and Blood.
We all eat the one bread, and this means that we ourselves become one.
In this way, adoration, as we said earlier, becomes union. God no
longer simply stands before us as the One who is totally Other. He is
within us, and we are in him. His dynamic enters into us and then seeks
to spread outwards to others until it fills the world, so that his love
can truly become the dominant measure of the world.
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You spend your time with that companion of yours who is
scarcely
even civil to you: and it’s hard. Keep at it, and don’t judge him.
He’ll have his “reasons”, just as you have yours, which you strengthen
so as to pray for him more each day.
(The Forge,
no.843)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why are
the missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit inseparable?
In the indivisible Trinity, the Son and the Spirit are distinct
but inseparable. From the very beginning until the end of time, when
the Father sends his Son he also sends his Spirit who unites us to
Christ in faith so that as adopted sons we can call God “Father”
(Romans 8:15). The Spirit is invisible but we know him through his
actions, when he reveals the Word to us and when he acts in the Church.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.137)
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Twenty-first
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(August 27) St
Monica (331-387) Born in Tagaste (Africa) of a Christian
family, while still young she married Patricius and had children, one
of whom was Augustine for whose conversion she prayed and suffered
unceasingly. She is the example of a mother of outstanding virtue,
great faith and efficacy in prayer. She died at Ostia (Italy). (Saints)
Scripture today:
Joshua
24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Psalm 34:2-3,
16-17, 18-19, 20-21;
Ephesians 5:21-32 or 5:2a, 25-32, or
Ephesians 5:2a, 25-32;
John 6:60-69
Then many of his
disciples who were listening said, "This saying
is hard; who can accept it?" Since Jesus knew that his disciples were
murmuring about this, he said to them, "Does this shock you? What if
you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is
the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I
have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who
do not believe." Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not
believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, "For this reason
I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by
my Father." As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to
their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said
to the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?" Simon Peter answered him,
"Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We
have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of
God." (John 6:60-69)
Our Gospel today
tells of how our Lord lost many of his disciples. They
left him after hearing him say that to follow him, indeed in order to
have eternal life, they would have to eat his flesh and drink his
blood. They went off saying that this was too much, even coming from
him. We can just imagine them going back to their families and telling
them what our Lord had said, with a shake of the head and saying that
their following of him was now over. Perhaps as a result of what they
said to others, others too left our Lord. At the end of his lengthy
announcement our Lord turned to the Twelve and asked if they were going
too, because there was to be no changing of what he had said. Simon
Peter answered, “Lord, who shall we go to? You have the words of
eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the holy one of
God.” (John
6:60-69) That expressed great faith in our Lord
because
Simon Peter had no idea how our Lord was going to make his doctrine
possible — it was only at the Last Supper that he showed them that they
would eat his body and drink his blood truly but sacramentally. The
Eucharist would be the greatest exercise of our Lord’s power and would
make possible a marvellous transformation into him.
Yes, the
loving power of Christ is exercised in a stupendous though hidden way
in
the Eucharist. Ordinary bread and ordinary wine are transformed by the
power of God into the living risen Christ, body and blood, soul and
divinity. There is a compete change of the bread and wine into Christ’s
person. The fact that God has planned to do things this way is worthy
of much reflection. Our Lord could have entered into union with us in
all his risen reality other than by having us consume his body and his
blood, and doing it in this sacramental way. Why take bread and
wine,
why transform it into himself for us to eat? To begin with, bread and
wine symbolize and well represent the entire fruit of the earth which
God has given to man to be his home and his means of livelihood. When
we see the bread and wine, when we take it to present and offer it to
God for his transforming action at Mass, we present the earth and the
world which he has given to us. The change that comes upon that bread
and wine is an omen and a pledge of the redeeming transformation which
God plans for the world. The Eucharist points to the world to come.
While
in the bread and the wine we think of the world that
God has
given to be our home, we also think of all that God has done for us in
the story of our redemption. For instance, we think of Melchisedech
offering bread and wine on behalf of Abraham our father in faith. We
think of the unleavened bread of the Jewish Passover, reminding
us of
the exodus of God’s people out of the land of slavery into the promised
land. We think of the manna from heaven God gave to his people on their
journey through the wilderness. We think of the multiplication of the
loaves by Christ pointing to the heavenly bread which is the Eucharist.
All of this was a prelude to the crowning work of God in the death and
resurrection of Christ. The bread and the wine represent all that God
has bestowed upon us in creation and redemption and it points to its
fulfilment. Furthermore, the bread and wine while representing God’s
work, represent our work too — the work of our own hands, our hopes and
dreams in life, our efforts, our disappointments and our achievements.
All this we bring before the Lord at Mass and by the power of the Holy
Spirit the bread and wine are transformed into God the Son made man.
The
transformation of the bread and the wine into the body and
the
blood of Christ makes present the sacrifice of our Lord at Calvary.
That sacrifice of Christ at Calvary involved a passing by him from this
present life to his risen life, a transformation into glory. God
intends each of us to follow this very path of transformation into the
likeness of Christ, living in him and living by his life. That
redeeming
transformation is begun at our baptism and is nourished by the
Eucharist, by a devout participation in Mass and by a worthy reception
of Holy Communion. By consuming worthily the body and the blood of
Christ we live more fully in him. The Eucharist is God’s principal
means of
transforming us and the world into something divine, and of making
Christ all in all.
Every time
we come to Mass let us entrust ourselves to the grace
of
the Holy Spirit who transforms the bread and wine into the person of
the living Jesus, asking that he will transform us into the likeness of
Christ, together with all our daily work and the world in which we live.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no. 1333-1336
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom
shall we go? You have the
words of eternal life”
Pope Benedict XVI (Homily,
celebration of Eucharist at the World Youth Day, 21 August 2005)
Let us return once more to the Last Supper. The new
element to emerge here was the deeper meaning given to Israel's ancient
prayer of blessing, which from that point on became the word of
transformation, enabling us to participate in the "hour" of Christ.
Jesus did not instruct us to repeat the Passover meal, which in any
event, given that it is an anniversary, is not repeatable at will. He
instructed us to enter into his "hour".
We enter into it through the sacred power of the words of
consecration — a transformation brought about through the prayer of
praise which places us in continuity with Israel and the whole of
salvation history, and at the same time ushers in the new, to which the
older prayer at its deepest level was pointing. The new prayer — which
the Church calls the "Eucharistic Prayer" — brings the Eucharist into
being. It is the word of power which transforms the gifts of the earth
in an entirely new way into God's gift of himself, and it draws us into
this process of transformation. That is why we call this action
"Eucharist", which is a translation of the Hebrew word beracha — thanksgiving, praise, blessing, and a transformation worked by the
Lord: the presence of his "hour". Jesus' hour is the hour in
which love triumphs. In other words: it is God who has triumphed,
because he is Love.
Jesus' hour seeks to become our own hour and will indeed
become so if we allow ourselves, through the celebration of the
Eucharist, to be drawn into that process of transformation that the
Lord intends to bring about. The Eucharist must become the centre of
our lives.
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God needs men and women who are sure and strong, on whom he can lean.
(The Forge,
no.850)
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What happened at Pentecost?
Fifty days after the Resurrection at Pentecost the glorified Jesus
Christ poured out the Spirit in abundance and revealed him as a divine
Person so that the Holy Trinity was fully manifest. The mission of
Christ and of the Spirit became the mission of the Church which is sent
to proclaim and spread the mystery of the communion of the Holy Trinity.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.144)
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Twenty-second
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(September 3) St
Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the Church (540-604). He
was a prefect of Rome and later became a monk. He was papal legate at
Constantinople, and five years after returning to his monastery in Rome
he was elected pope. He greatly influenced the life of the Church. He
unified the liturgy and compiled the Gregorian chant named after him.
One of Gregory’s most far reaching actions was to send missionaries to
England. This was prompted by the sight of fair-haired Anglo-Saxon
youths exposed for sale in the Roman slave market. He wrote many works
on morals and dogma. (Saints)
Deut.
4:1-2,
6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18,
21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
Now when the Pharisees
with some
scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they observed
that some of his disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is,
unwashed, hands. (For the Pharisees and, in fact, all Jews, do not eat
without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition of the
elders. And on coming from the marketplace they do not eat without
purifying themselves. And there are many other things that they have
traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and kettles
(and beds).) So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, "Why do your
disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal
with unclean hands?" He responded, "Well did Isaiah prophesy about you
hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me; In vain do they worship me, teaching
as doctrines human precepts.' You disregard God's commandment but cling
to human tradition." He summoned the crowd again and said to them,
"Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from
outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from
within are what defile." From within people, from their hearts, come
evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice,
deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these
evils come from within and they defile."
(Mark
7:1-8,14-15,21-23)
There has been a lot of mention in
the media (August 2006) of embryonic stem cell research, which involves
extracting stem cells for research from the living human embryo at the cost of
its life.
This matter has come before Federal Parliament and the Prime Minister has
responded by announcing that members of his own party will be free to vote
according to their personal conscience. They will be voting on the life and
death of countess future human embryos. It will be a so-called conscience vote,
which is widely interpreted as offering a very real chance for this legislation
to be passed. If it is, untold numbers of human embryos will be destroyed in the
process. It brings into sharp relief the issue of personal conscience not only
for the conduct of one’s own life, but for the course of society at large.
Nearly five hundred years ago Martin Luther when formally asked to revoke his
teaching which had been condemned by the Church, replied that his conscience
dictated otherwise. “I cannot revoke anything,” he said, “nor do I wish to;
since to go against one’s conscience is neither safe nor right: here I stand, I
cannot do otherwise.” So on the basis of following his own conscience he set his
face against the Church’s authority and went on to begin the Protestant
reformation which led to the break up of Christendom. This in turn contributed
to the emergence of a Western culture profoundly marked by relativism in which
God and his revealed Law is regarded as no more than a subjective personal
opinion. The ultimate guide of man’s conscience in matters of religious truth
and various aspects of personal morality is now publicly regarded as being man’s
private judgment, whatever be the values that shape it. This judgment is deemed
to be sacred if sincerely and passionately held. Therefore the “truth” to be
followed and legalized is the judgment of the greatest number. Furthermore, what
tends to be regarded as of decisive value for the “conscience” is not an
absolute such as the human embryo, but what can be demonstrated empirically to
be useful.
In our
Gospel today St Mark tells us that “the Pharisees and some of the
scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered round Jesus and they
noticed that some of his disciples were eating with unclean hands”. So
they asked our Lord “Why do your disciples not respect the tradition of
the elders but eat their food with unclean hands?” (Mark
7:1-8) They were insisting that our Lord and his disciples respect the authority
of the elders and govern their behaviour accordingly. The issue was, then, what
authority was to govern the conscience
of God’s people. Of course, the discussion about conscience in our day is
different from that presented in our Gospel passage today. But it does remind us
of the importance of the entire issue, and of how truth is not determined
ultimately by “a conscience vote”, because as with the Pharisees and the scribes
one’s personal and strongly-felt judgment can be very mistaken. Moreover, a
judgment “according to one’s conscience” may simply mean a judgment that is
“strongly felt”. Any strongly felt opinion may be in error. It may be blind and
immensely harmful as we see in the case of a conscientious Islamic terrorist.
The erroneous conscience may be culpable too. In our Gospel passage today our
Lord in reply to the Pharisees not only points out to them how mistaken they are
but he calls them “hypocrites”. That means that they presented themselves as
standing conscientiously for the right while in their hearts they were
duplicitous. They did not sincerely seek the truth but rather their own way.
They secretly set aside the commandments of God: “the doctrine they teach are
only human regulations,” our Lord replied. “You put aside the commandment of God
to cling to human traditions.” Whatever be the difference between the mistaken,
duplicitous and harmful conscience in our Lord’s day and that of our own, our
Lord’s words make it very clear that the conscience of man is to be governed
entirely by the Law of God. Man must conscientiously seek to know the law of God
and shape his conscience and behaviour by that. He must not just passionately
work out his own view independently of God and perhaps in some defiance of him
and of the institutions he has established. In our day, God’s Law is not
accepted as the objective criterion of conscience and the truth, largely because
the very being of God is not accepted as objective. Our culture is jealously
secular.
The
Christian has a great mission to those around him. It is to bear
witness to the reality of God and his revelation, and to the Church
which makes clear how God’s nature and Law ought shape the conscience
of each individual and the conscience of the society in which he lives.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1776-1794
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From within people, from their hearts, come peace
(Mark
7:1-8,14-15,21-23)
Commentary from Vatican
Council II (Gaudium
et Spes, 82)
The problems of peace and of disarmament have already been the
subject
of extensive, strenuous and constant examination. Together with
international meetings dealing with these problems, such studies should
be regarded as the first steps toward solving these serious questions,
and should be promoted with even greater urgency by way of yielding
concrete results in the future. Nevertheless, men should take heed not
to entrust themselves only to the efforts of some, while not caring
about their own attitudes…
It does them no good to work for peace as long as feelings of
hostility, contempt and distrust, as well as racial hatred and
unbending ideologies, continue to divide men and place them in opposing
camps. Consequently there is above all a pressing need for a renewed
education of attitudes and for new inspiration in public opinion. Those
who are dedicated to the work of education, particularly of the young,
or who mould public opinion, should consider it their most weighty task
to instruct all in fresh sentiments of peace. Indeed, we all need a
change of heart as we regard the entire world and those tasks which we
can perform in unison for the betterment of our race.
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The Kingdom of Jesus Christ: that is our task. So, my child, be
generous: do not be anxious to know any of the many reasons he has to
want to reign in you. If you look at him, it will be enough for you to
consider how much he loves you. You will feel a hunger to correspond to
his love, crying aloud that you really love him here and now; and you
will understand that if you don’t leave him, he won’t leave you.
(The Forge,
no.857)
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In
what
way is the
Church a mystery?
The Church is a mystery in as much as in her visible reality there
is
present and active a divine spiritual reality which can only be seen
with the eyes of faith.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.151)
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Twenty
third Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(September 10) Today let us think of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino (Saints)
Scripture
today: Isaiah
35:4-7a; Psalm 146:7, 8-9, 9-10;
James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37
Again he left the district of
Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district
of the Decapolis. And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech
impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by
himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man's ears and,
spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned,
and said to him, "Ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!") And (immediately)
the man's ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he
spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he
ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly
astonished and they said, "He has done all things well. He makes the
deaf hear and (the) mute speak."
(Mark 7:31-37)
There
are many things that could be said about our Gospel passage today, and
about how our Lord took aside the deaf man who also had an impediment
in his speech and proceeded to cure him. Our Lord insisted with the man
that he not tell others about it (Mark
7:31-37) probably because he did
not want his true mission to be misunderstood and completely lost sight
of. The man went off and did what our Lord had forbidden
him to do and
undoubtedly this impeded our Lord’s work to some extent, just as the
agitation to make him king impeded his work too. His work was to take
away the sin of the world and to confer on us the gift of his holiness.
The pivotal act in this great redemptive project was his death and
resurrection. But people were interested in other things he was doing:
feeding the crowds, curing the sick and raising the dead. This is what
they spoke about when speaking of him. When he gave them something
immensely important such as the doctrine of the coming Eucharist,
telling them that they would have to eat his body and drink his blood
he was rejected. They spoke about him, yes, but in an entirely
unfavourable light. So as we think of our Lord forbidding those he
benefited from speaking about him in what was in effect a misleading
way, let us turn our thoughts to the kind of witness to Jesus our words
ought be giving.
We remember how Christ before Pontius Pilate stated that for this he was born
and came into the world, to bear witness to the truth. He called to himself his
Apostles to join him in this great work of bearing witness to the
divinely-revealed truth about him. His disciples were to go to the whole world
and by their words and their lives make disciples of all the nations. Our whole
bearing, our entire life, and all that we say ought bear witness to the truth,
especially the Truth which is the person of Christ. Let us then resolve to bear
witness to the truth just as Christ did. This we do at home within our
family, gently and respectfully, yet with the greatest firmness when need be. We
do this in our work environment and this can involve tremendous difficulty when
others scorn and ridicule aspects of the Catholic and Christian faith. We do it
among our friends, our acquaintances and daily contacts whenever the opportunity
is favourable or required of us. The main point is that we come to understand
that the work of bearing witness to Jesus and to his revelation as transmitted
to us by the Church is an absolutely essential aspect of our Christian life. The
perennial situation is that all too few of Christ’s faithful take up the work,
the daily work, of being apostolic. The result of this is that all too few
Australians attain a true knowledge of what God has revealed because most
Australians and most Catholic do not go to Church to hear the word of God. So it
has to be brought to them by their daily colleagues.
As we think of
our
Lord granting speech and hearing to the man brought to him, let us
consider our use of the speech and the hearing that has been granted to
us. It has been given to us to use in such a way that God will be
glorified. Let us resolve to interact with our neighbour in such a way
that daily God will be honoured the more.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.2464-2474
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"He has done all
things
well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak." (Mark 7:31-37)
Commentary by John Tauler (1300-1361),
Dominican.
Second Sermon for the
Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Sermon 49)
It is very important to understand what makes men
deaf.
From the
time that the first man opened his ears to the voice of the Enemy, he
became deaf and all of us after him, so that we cannot hear or
understand the sweet voice of the Eternal Word. Yet we know that the
Eternal Word is still so unutterably near to us inwardly, in the very
principle of our being, that not our humanity itself, our own nature,
our own thoughts, nor anything that can be named or said or understood,
is so near or planted so deep within us as the Eternal Word. It is ever
speaking in us; but we do not hear it because of the deep deafness that
has come upon us… Man’s faculties are so benumbed that he has become
dumb, and does not know his own self. If he desired to speak of what is
within him, he could not, for he does not know how it stands with him,
nor can be discern his own ways and works…
What is this deeply hurtful whispering of the Enemy?
It is
every
disordered image or suggestion that starts up in your mind, whether
belonging to your creaturely desires and wishes, or this world and
every thing that belongs to it; whether it be wealth, reputation, even
friends or relations, or your own nature, or whatever lays hold of your
imagination. Through all these things he has his access to your soul…
Now when our Lord comes and puts his finger into
man’s ear
and touches his tongue, how eloquent will he become!
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Have recourse to the sweet Lady Mary, Mother of God and our Mother
also, entrusting to her care the cleanliness of soul and body of all
mankind. Tell her that you want to call upon her, and want others to
call upon her continually. And that you want to conquer always, in the
bad moments — or the good, very good moments — of your struggle against
those who are hostile to our being children of God.
(The Forge, 864)
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Why
is the Church called the “Bride of Christ”?
She is called the “Bride of Christ” because the Lord himself
called
himself her “Spouse” (Mark 2:19). The Lord has loved the Church and has
joined her to himself in an everlasting covenant. He has given himself
up for her in order to purify her with his blood and “sanctify her”
(Ephesians 5:26), making her the fruitful mother of all the children of
God. While the term “body” expresses the unity of the “head” with the
members, the term “bride” emphasises the distinction of the two in
their personal relationship.
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.158)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty
fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time B
(September 17) St
Robert Bellarmine, bishop and doctor of the Church
(1542-1621). Born in Italy, he was a Jesuit, a bishop and a
cardinal. A
professor of theology in Louvain and Rome, Robert Bellarmine was one of
the ablest and most effective theologians of the Church against
Protestantism.
(Saints)
Scripture today: Isaiah
50:5-9;
Psalm 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9;
James
2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35
He
began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders,
the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three
days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to
rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as
God does, but as human beings do.” He summoned the crowd with his
disciples and said to them, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny
himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save
his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that
of the gospel will save it.”
(Mark
8:27-35)
Of
all the events in the
public life of our Lord prior to his Passion
the conversation between our Lord and his closest disciples in today’s
Gospel are perhaps the most significant. Our Lord had been preaching,
teaching, working miracles and travelling throughout the towns and
villages of Galilee and Judea. He had been pointed out by John the
Baptist as the one who was to come. People were forming their views of
him and the leaders of the people were coming to the point of rejecting
and doing away with him. At this critical point our Lord puts to his
disciples the question of who people think him to be (Mark
8:27-35), and of course
there are various answers — generally that he is a true prophet, indeed
one of the previous prophets come back to life, such as Elijah or even
John the Baptist himself. But then our Lord asks the Twelve who they
say he is and Simon Peter gives him the true answer, an answer he is
able to give because he has been enlightened by the Father. Jesus is
the Messiah, the one long awaited and promised. Everything hinges on
him.
While
the
disciples believed this they certainly did not
understand how he was going to fulfil the plan of redemption promised
by God. God’s plan had some clear
indications and pointers in the Scriptures but they were not commonly
noticed and perhaps we too may not have noticed them. I
suppose the chosen people looked back to the great saving deeds of
Yahweh such as the deliverance from slavery in Egypt as the paradigm of
the kind of liberation that was coming. They perhaps extrapolated from
one to
the other in a fairly literal way. They thought back to how God struck
the Pharoah and Egypt with plagues and other calamities. They thought
of God leading his chosen ones behind Moses across the sea and closing
the sea over the pursuing Egyptians. They thought of the Israelites
being led by Joshua into the promised land and their victories over the
inhabitants who were there. They would have thought of King David and
his victories. The coming Messiah would free God’s people of their
oppression, and if they thought of their being liberated from sin,
perhaps they thought of sin in a fairly superficial sense.
In
fact there were signs in the Scriptures of what
was coming.
There was the grand figure of the victorious Son of Man in the prophet
Daniel. There was in
the Book of Isaiah the haunting person of the Servant of Yahweh.
Our first reading today presents us with one of the passages describing
this figure (Isaiah
50:5-9). He
would not be a Servant of glorious victories and conquests
but a Suffering Servant. By his sufferings he would save the many. This
great suffering Servant cast light on the value of the sufferings of
God’s people, and especially the sufferings of God’s most obedient
servants among them. But especially did this figure throw light on the
Messiah who was to come. His sufferings precisely as the perfect
Servant of God offered the key to the way God would save his people
from their sins.
God’s
plan
of redemption was a complete surprise, probably most
of all to Satan. Undoubtedly he thought that by engineering the
death of Jesus he was putting a stop to the marvellous work he was
doing. God’s plan was a wondrous fulfilment of the prophecies and
our Lord was at pains to show this. The Son of Man had to suffer in
order to enter into his glory. Obedience in the midst of great
suffering and reversal was the path to redemption, the redemption of
God’s chosen people and of all mankind. And so once he saw that the
Twelve accepted that he was the Messiah our Lord began to teach them
that he
“was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and
the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after
three days to rise again. And he said all these things quite openly”
(Mark
8:27-35). Of course such talk as this was shocking to them, and
so Simon Peter began to insist with our Lord that such a thing could
not and must not happen to him. It was unthinkable that this be the
path for the Messiah. But our Lord sharply reprimanded him in front of
them all. Simon was speaking in a way directly opposed to the plan of
God. The way to glory was not man’s way but through obedient
suffering.
This,
then, is the critical point which we must grasp. It
is one thing to have been granted the grace to know and accept our Lord
for who he is, the Son of God and the Redeemer of man. It is another
thing to accept the
implications of the path which it was necessary for him to follow. If
we wish to be his disciples — and hopefully all of us do wish this — we
must
learn to follow our Lord along that same path of doing and accepting
God’s will precisely and especially when it is immensely difficult. It
could mean giving up one’s life. It is the Cross of Christ, not simply
wealth, power, pleasure and honours, that is so full of fruitfulness.
It is this path of
the Cross that brings sanctity and union with Jesus here and hereafter.
How can we learn this and then act on it? By learning to love Jesus
truly, and by praying for the grace to embrace the cross of every day.
So let us pray for God’s love and his grace. With his love and his
grace we shall follow him to the end.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church,
no.599-605
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“You are not judging by God’s standards but
by man’s.” (Mark 8:27-35)
Commentary by St Augustine
(354-430) Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Sermon 96)
When the Lord commits the person wanting to follow him to
renounce himself, we think his commandment is difficult and hard to
hear. But if the one who commands us helps us to fulfil it, his
commandment is neither difficult nor painful… And that other word that
the Lord spoke is also true: “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Mt
11:30) For love sweetens what might be painful in the precepts. We all
know what marvels love can accomplish… What rigours have people
endured, what unworthy and intolerable living conditions have they
borne so as to be able to possess the object of their love! …Why be
surprised that the person who loves Christ and who wants to follow him
renounces himself in order to love him? For if the human person loses
himself by loving himself, there is no doubt that he will find himself
by renouncing himself…
Who would refuse to follow Christ to the dwelling place of
perfect happiness, of supreme peace and of eternal tranquillity? It is
good to follow him there. But we have to know the way in order to
arrive… The path seems to you to be covered with rough patches, it puts
you off, you don’t want to follow Christ. Walk behind him! The path,
which men have laid out is rugged, but it was made level when Christ
walked upon it while returning to heaven. So who would refuse to go
forward towards glory?
Everyone likes to rise up in glory, but humility is the
ladder
that must be climbed in order to get there. Why do you lift up your
foot higher than yourself? Do you want to fall down instead of go up?
Begin with this ladder. It will already make you go up. The two
disciples who said: “Lord, see to it that we sit, one at your right and
the other at your left, when you come into your glory,” paid no
attention to this degree of humility. They aimed for the summit and did
not see the ladder. But the Lord showed them the ladder. So what did he
answer? “Can you drink the cup I shall drink? (Mk 10:38) You who desire
to reach the height of honours, can you drink the chalice of humility?”
That is why he did not limit himself to saying in a general way: “May
he renounce himself and follow me”, but rather, he added: “May he take
up his cross and follow me.”
(Courtesy of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you that urge, that divine madness, to bring souls to know
the
Love of God? In your ordinary life, then, offer up mortifications,
pray, carry out your duty, and conquer yourself in all kinds of tiny
details.
(The Forge,
no.870)
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In what way is
the Church holy?
The Church is holy insofar as the Most Holy God is her author.
Christ
has given himself for her to sanctify her and make her a source of
sanctification. The Holy Spirit gives her life with charity. In the
Church one finds the fullness of the means of salvation. Holiness is
the vocation of each of her members and the purpose of all her
activities. The Church counts among her members the Virgin Mary and
numerous Saints who are her models and intercessors. The holiness of
the Church is the fountain of sanctification for her children who here
on earth recognize themselves as sinners ever in need of conversion and
purification. (CCC 823-829, 867)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.165)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-fifth
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(September 24) Today let us think of Saint Pacific of San Severino
and Our Lady of Ransom (Saints)
Scripture today:
Wisdom 2:12,
17-20; Psalm 54:3-4, 5, 6, 8; James
3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37
Then
he sat down, called
the Twelve, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall
be the last of all and the servant of all.” Taking a child, he placed
it in the their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and
whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”
(Mark 9:30-37)
Years ago I was
told
that the motto of the then Archbishop of New York
(Cardinal John
O’Connor) was that “There can be no love without justice.” I have never
checked whether this in fact was his motto, but I have always
considered it to be a very good statement. One of the things it
suggests is that
in talking of Christian love, it is possible to forget to be just. In
general we could describe justice as the granting to another what is
due to him or her by right. Of course, the best support for justice is
love, but love ought focus in the first instance on serving people’s
rights. Often it is precisely this which is lacking between people who
love one another. For instance, spouses who love one another can forget
certain rights the other has. A husband can be unjust to his wife, and
vice versa. A brother can be unjust to another brother or sister, and
vice versa. Children can be unjust to their parents and vice versa.
This can and will gradually lead to the breakdown of love. So there can
be no love without justice, and there can be no Christian love in the
everyday life of the Christian in the world if he does not try to be
just to others.
The characteristic milieu of the life of the lay member of the Church is
the world, the world of his family, workplace, friends and the secular
community. His vocation in the world as a servant and member of Christ is
therefore to try to make the world around him the kind of milieu God wants it to
be. To do this he ought try to gain an understanding of the Church’s social
justice teaching so as to be able to work for justice according to the mind of
Christ. For instance, if all a Catholic reads is the newspapers and the media
around him he will probably make his own the notions of social justice
championed by the media. Many high profile people promote causes which they
think are a matter of justice when they are in fact an injustice. Their mistaken
views will influence a Catholic who does not make it his business to know the
Church’s teaching — and there is a great deal of social justice teaching that
has come from the Church. For instance, some in the media have implied that it
is an injustice to those suffering various debilities to prohibit research and
experimentation on the stem cells of human embryos. If we do not know the
Church’s social justice and moral teaching we might slip into thinking this
ourselves. We need to know that the Church points out that to engage in
embryonic stem cell research would be a grave injustice to the human embryo.
This procedure destroys or gravely harms
the embryo. The path to take is to use, rather, the stem cells of the fully
formed human being.
I
mention that example simply to emphasize the importance not only of
practising justice but of a correct notion of what is just. We must
practise justice with a mind formed by Christ and his teaching, coming
to us in the ministry of the Church. Being just in this sense is
a commitment which ought flow from love — just as God is a just God and
his justice flows from his love. Our love ought prompt us to be very
sensitive to justice being done. Another area which affects the human
being at a profound level is his culture. His culture is the shape and
make-up of his mind and heart, including language, educational
background, values, preferences, his history and the history of his
people. In a spirit of justice we ought respect the culture of people
and try to see the good and strong points in that culture. Their
culture may be very different from our own, but if we aspire to live an
authentic and generous Christian life following closely in the
footsteps of our Lord, we should respect the culture of others — provided it does not include violations of morality. Many cultures
violate natural morality in this or that point, and respect for the
culture of a person does not mean accepting or supporting that which by
the standards of objective morality is wrong. Such matters ought be the
subject of ongoing dialogue and, if necessary, firm prohibition. But it
does mean transcending our mere tastes, just as Christ himself is
accepting and appreciative of all, of whatever culture.
In
our Gospel passage today (Mark 9: 30-37)
our Lord tells his disciples that whoever receives a child in his name
welcomes him. That is to say that whatever we do to the least person
our Lord regards as done to him. This thought ought impel us to show
Christian love to all by being very just. Today
is Social Justice Sunday in Australia. It recalls in a special way the
great address to the Australian Aborigines given by Pope John Paul II
twenty years ago in 1986 at Alice Springs. In it he expressed the
Church’s profound appreciation of all cultures. Today ought be the
opportunity to renew our commitment to be just, and to make Christian
love the driving force behind our justice.
(E.J.Tyler)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Whoever welcomes one
such
child in my name welcomes me” (Mark 9:30-37)
Commentary from St Irenaeus of Lyon (130 to
208), Bishop, Theologian and Martyr
Against the
Heresies, IV, 38, 1-2
Could God not have made the human person perfect right from
the
beginning? For God, who has always been identical with himself and who
is not created, everything is possible. But because the existence of
the created beings began after God’s, they are necessarily inferior to
God who made them… Thus, since they are created, they are not perfect.
When they have just been born, they are small children, and as small
children, they are neither accustomed to nor have they had practice in
perfect conduct… Thus, God could give perfection to the human person
right from the beginning, but the human person was incapable of
receiving this perfection, for he / she was only a small child.
And that is why, in the last times when our Lord gathered up all
things
in him (Eph 1:10), he came to us, not in his power, but in such a way
that we were able to see him. For he could have come to us in his
inexpressible glory, but we were not yet able to bear the greatness of
his glory… Although the Word of God was perfect, with humankind he
became a small child, not for himself, but because of the state of
childhood in which was humankind.
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The closer a creature comes to God, the more universal it feels.
Its
heart expands, making room for everything and everybody in its single
great desire to place the whole universe at the feet of Jesus.
(The Forge,
no.877)
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Why must the Church proclaim the Gospel to the whole world?
The Church must do so because Christ has given the command: “Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
This missionary mandate of the Lord has its origin in the eternal love
of God who has sent his Son and the Holy Spirit because “he desires all
men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy
2:4). (CCC 849-851)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.172)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-sixth
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(October 1) St
Therese Martin of the Child Jesus (1873-1897). Born in France.
While very young, she entered the monastery of the Carmelites of
Lisieux. She was outstanding for her humility, simplicity and
confidence in God. She offered her life for the salvation of souls and
for the Church. (Saints)
Scripture:
Numbers
11:25-29; Psalm 19:8, 10, 12-13, 14; James 5:1-6;
Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
At that time, John said
to Jesus, "Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and
we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us." Jesus replied,
"Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my
name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not
against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink
because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose
his reward. "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me
to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around
his neck and he were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to
sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than
with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. And if
your foot causes you to sin, cut if off. It is better for you to enter
into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if
your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into
the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into
Gehenna, where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not
quenched.'"
(Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48)
Our
Lord’s teaching in today’s Gospel passage surely reminds us of the
fundamental importance of human solidarity. "Do not stop him ...
Whoever is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:38-39).
Solidarity is an eminently
Christian virtue prompting us to share our material and spiritual goods
with our fellow man. We often encounter a spirit of solidarity among
people. It may be in a well knit family in which all its members are
interested in one another and want to help one another. They regularly
keep in touch and love to hear
from one another. In all too many cases
there is not a lot of solidarity within families. Again, we might
notice a
strong spirit of solidarity among members of a trade union. Recently
there was on television an interview with some retired waterfront
workers who spoke about their work many decades ago during the great
Depression, and how hard it was. What made all the difference to their
difficult life was the bond between the workers of their union. This
powerful spirit of solidarity supported them and helped them through
the frequent difficult times. Or it could be the solidarity within a
military division on the field of battle. I have known soldiers who
have come to the end of their military career and have found it very
hard to leave their life because of the tremendous solidarity that they
experienced with others with whom they served. Solidarity is a very
good and
admirable human virtue which God clearly means man to have. It ought
flourish wherever men and women work together because all are
equal in their humanity. Each is just as much a “self” as the other,
and deserving of equal respect, appreciation and support.
Of course, a spirit of
solidarity can be a bad thing if it leads to evil. There can be a deep
spirit of solidarity among the members of an extensive community of
mafia criminals. Others beyond the mafia circle could act in
solidarity with it and give it various forms of cooperation which might
sustain it in its life of crime. I recently watched a movie about a
terrorist take-over of a passenger plane and one thing that was vividly
portrayed was the profound Islamic solidarity that existed among the
terrorists. It sustained them in murderous goals. We see solidarity
everywhere in creation. Elephants move around in herds, as do buffalo
and cattle. Fish swim in swarms, birds fly in flocks. It is obviously a
reflection of the hand from which has come all things. Indeed, it has
been revealed to us that God himself lives in solidarity. In his
personhood he is not alone, for the one sole God is three persons
united in unimaginable love and solidarity. The imprint of this is to
be seen throughout creation, especially in the world of man. Man is
born into a situation marked by solidarity in his own family, or at
least that is how it should be. He needs to live in solidarity with
others in all his walks of life, and his happiness will depend in large
measure on his living in solidarity with others. If he is isolated from
others normally he will not be happy. The one thing which will mar
solidarity is the action of sin, including original sin. Sin destroys
solidarity.
The
Christian above all looks to the example of his Master, our Lord
Jesus Christ. When God sent his Son into the world to take flesh and
dwell among us, his Son truly became one of us. He entered into
solidarity with every man and woman in a unique way, taking on himself
the sin of the whole world and of everyone in it. He entered into a
profound solidarity with each of us sinners even though he himself was
without sin. He showed this solidarity in numerous ways. He grew up
sharing the life of ordinary townspeople at Nazareth. At the beginning
of his public ministry he stepped forward to be baptised by John the
Baptist showing his solidarity with the sinful world, even though John
would have prevented him if he could. He associated with ordinary
sinful folk and showed them by his words and deeds the mercy of God.
Finally and most importantly, he suffered death in solidarity with the
entire human race, and in his death he took on himself in solidarity
the burden of the sins of the world and expiated for them. Our Gospel
today (Mark
9: 38-43, 45, 47-48) shows our Lord giving expression in
his teaching to solidarity. He refused to condemn or restrict the man
who was casting out demons in his name. He instructed his disciples to
assist the needy. The Second Vatican Council teaches us that Christ in
his humanity united himself with every man, and so he is in solidarity
with each of us too. In all of this we see, as the present Pope puts
it, the face of the Father. We who aspire to be his disciples have a
constant example to prompt us to live in solidarity with all men, just
like Christ.
Let us
resolve to be united with our Lord in his solidarity with all men and
women. Putting on the mind of Christ involves living a life of
Christ-like concern for all others, a solidarity oriented towards
fulfilling the will of God our common Father. Let us resolve to
practise the solidarity of Christ, and to live it out with his mind and
heart.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1939-1942
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"He does not follow us" (Mark 9:38-43) :
divisions make little ones stumble
Commentary by St John Chrysostom
(345-407), bishop and doctor of the Church
(Homily 3 on First Corinthians)
"May you all speak the same thing, let there
be no divisions among you." (1 Corinthians 1:10).St. Paul says this
because divided bodies of Christians cannot become separate entities,
each entire within itself, but rather the One Body which originally
existed perishes. If each church were a separate body, there might be
many of them; but they are one body and divisions destroy it… After
having dealt sharply with them by using the word "schism," Paul softens
and soothes them, saying, "May you be perfectly joined together in the
same mind and in the same judgment. Do not suppose," he adds, "that I
mean harmony only in words, best harmony of one mind and one heart."
There is also such a thing as harmony of opinions,
where there is not yet harmony of deed and action; for instance, when
though we have the same faith, but we are not joined together in love.
Such was the case at Corinth at that time, some choosing one leader,
and some another. For this reason Paul says it is necessary to agree
both in "mind" and in "judgment." For it was not from differences in
faith that the schisms arose, but from human contentiousness. "It has
been declared to me that there are contentions among you… Is Christ
divided?" (1 Corinthians 1:13)
(Courtesy
of "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is not pride, but fortitude, when you make your authority felt,
cutting out what needs to be cut out, when the fulfilment of the Holy
Will of God demands it.
(The
Forge, no.884)
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Why did Christ institute an
ecclesiastical hierarchy?
Christ instituted an ecclesiastical hierarchy with the mission of
feeding the people of God in his name and for this purpose gave it
authority. The hierarchy is formed of sacred ministers, bishops,
priests, and deacons. Thanks to the sacrament of Orders, bishops and
priests act in the exercise of their ministry in the name and person of
Christ the Head. Deacons minister to the people of God in the diakonia
(service) of word, liturgy, and charity. (CCC 874-876, 935)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.179)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-seventh
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(October 8) Today let us think of Saint Pelagia
(Saints)
Scripture: Genesis
2:18-24; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6; Hebrews
2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16 or 10: 2-12.
The Pharisees
approached Jesus and asked, "Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his
wife?" They were testing him. He said to them in reply, "What did Moses
command you?" They replied, "Moses permitted a husband to write a bill
of divorce and dismiss her." But Jesus told them, "Because of the
hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the
beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a
man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and
the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one
flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must
separate." In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about
this. He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another
commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and
marries another, she commits adultery." (Mark
10:2-12)
Marriage is one
of the
most common and yet one of the most beautiful things in the world. It
is something which a young person normally aspires to with expectation
and when a couple meet and
decide to get married, the event normally
brings joy to everyone. It is almost self-evident that marriage is
something deeply part of man’s best nature and so part of the plan of
God. The challenge, though, for the couple being married,
for their
families, and for every married couple all through their married lives,
is to look to the plan of God as the light of their married life. The
tendency will be to look on their marriage from the viewpoint of their
personal background or social environment alone.
Their experience of their own family will prompt various expectations.
Their reading and viewing of the media and other forms of entertainment
will prompt other expectations. Their own imaginations and natural
hopes will prompt still further expectations. All of this will have a
certain validity but it cannot provide the rock on which the house of
married life should be built. What every married couple and every
couple
preparing for marriage ought look to is what God has revealed of his
plan for marriage. Every couple ought make it their business to
know this divine plan, to nourish it in their hearts and work daily
towards its fulfilment in their lives. Our Lord in the Gospel of today
(Mark 10:2-12)
tells us something of this plan.
The first
thing that our Lord tells us about marriage is that God intends it to
be a marvellous union between the spouses. The two become one,
one flesh until death. No one must ever disrupt the union between the
two which God has established. God has joined them together. They are
joined in marriage by an act of God. As a couple prepares for marriage
they ought
look on the coming event as something God will do to them, for them and
in them.
He unites them in love. As a married couple reflects on their married
state they ought look on it as coming from God. It was God’s gift in
the past and is his ongoing gift to them now and into the future.
Nothing can be allowed that might threaten or weaken this divinely
created bond. Their happiness will lie in this being the foundation of
their lives and on their building up a profound and love for one
another. The structure of their life is such that they belong to one
another
until death, and this is so by God’s act.
Moreover
our Lord has made of the marriage bond not only something exclusive to
the couple and
unbreakable by very nature, but for spouses who are members of Christ’s
Church it is also a sign and vehicle of God’s grace and life. Marriage
between baptised members of Christ’s Church is one of the seven
sacraments. The love
that is naturally present or should be present in a marriage
becomes by divine arrangement a channel of the life and love of God for
the couple. His life flows through the veins of their love. The more
they love one another the more will that love for one another be
sanctifying because God is present in it provided it acts according to
his law. The more they love one another the more will they love God
and the more will God sanctify them. The Holy Spirit will be especially
active in their life of love for one another, drawing each spouse not
only closer in love to the other, but closer in love to God. The
spouses will be sanctifying their lives precisely by their mutual love,
and this by the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit who is present
in the marriage from the beginning because it is a sacrament.
So not only
does God himself unite couples at the moment of their marriage, binding
them into an exclusive and life-long mutual bond, but he comes into the
marriage to abide within it as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The triune God dwells in the marriage as his abode, sanctifying them by
sharing his
life with them precisely by means of their love for one another.
Furthermore, by their very married love not only are they sanctified
but they contribute towards the sanctification of others beyond the
marriage. This is so because their married life is made by God to be a
sign of the undying and personal love that Christ has for us his
Church. An enlightened observer seeing the union between a truly
Christian couple knows that this reflects the love that Christ has for
him and for the entire Church. He will be edified and inspired to be
united the more with God.
Therefore
it is so very critical that the Christian couple take all the means
that the Church provides and recommends in order to stay close to
Christ and to grow into a fervent love for him. In this way will they
remain in the state of grace and be able to build a holy and strong
love for one anther. Thus by the grace of the Holy Spirit who abides
within their marriage will they will be the instruments of their mutual
sanctification and a most important means of the sanctification of
others beyond their married and family life in the Church and in the
world.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1602-1617
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The two shall become one flesh.
So they are no longer two but one flesh." (Mark 10:2-12)
Commentary by Pope Benedict
XVI (Encyclical letter "Deus
caritas est", § 9-11)
In the world of the Bible, God's relationship with
Israel is described using the metaphors of betrothal and marriage;
idolatry is thus adultery and prostitution… But God's eros for man is
also totally agape. This is not only because it is bestowed in a
completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit, but also
because it is love which forgives… In this biblical vision, on the one
hand we find ourselves before a strictly metaphysical image of God: God
is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal
principle of creation—the Logos, primordial reason—is at the same time
a lover with all the passion of a true love. Eros is thus supremely
ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with
agape… The first novelty of biblical faith consists… in its image of
God. The second, essentially connected to this, is found in the image
of man.
The biblical account of creation speaks of the
solitude of Adam, the first man, and God's decision to give him a
helper… The idea is certainly present that man is somehow incomplete,
driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole,
the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become
“complete”. The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about
Adam: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to
his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).
Two aspects of this are important.
First, eros is somehow rooted in man's very nature; Adam is a seeker,
who “abandons his mother and father” in order to find woman; only
together do the two represent complete humanity and become “one flesh”.
The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of
creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique
and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest
purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous
marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the
icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa.
God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love.
(Selected
by "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
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Be grateful to God from the bottom of your heart for those wonderful
and awesome faculties he chose to give you when he made you — your
intellect and your will. They are wonderful, because they make you like
him; and awesome because there are human beings who turn their
faculties against their Creator. It seems to me we could sum up the
thankfulness that we owe as children of God by saying to this Father of
ours, now and always, serviam!: I will serve you.
(The Forge,
no.891)
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How do
Bishops exercise their ministry of sanctification?
Bishops sanctify the Church by dispensing the grace of Christ by their
ministry of the word and the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist,
and also by their prayers, their example and their work.
(CCC 893)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.186)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-eighth
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(October 15) St
Teresa of Jesus (of Avila), virgin and Doctor of the Church (1515-1582).
Born in Avila, Spain. She was a Carmelite who reformed the Order with
the help of St John of the Cross. Although she suffered many hardships,
she was faithful to the Church in the spirit of the Council of Trent.
She contributed to the renewal of the entire ecclesiastical community
and wrote outstanding works of asceticism and mysticism. Her spiritual
teachings are a guide to a life of union with God. She has been
declared a Doctor of the Church.
(Saints)
Scripture:
Wisdom
7:7-11; Psalm 90:12-13, 14-15,
16-17; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark
10:17-30
As
Jesus was setting out
on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, "Good
teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answered him,
"Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the
commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you
shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not
defraud; honour your father and your mother." He replied and said to
him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." Jesus,
looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You are lacking in one
thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have
treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." At that statement his face
fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Jesus looked
around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have
wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" The disciples were amazed at his
words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, "Children, how hard it is
to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of
God." They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, "Then
who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For human beings it
is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God."
(Mark 10: 17-27)
In our Gospel passage
today Our Lord makes it plain that there is a special difficulty facing
the one who has wealth. The difficulty lies in the tendency to give
part of one’s heart to material possessions when God asks that we give
our whole heart to him. On anther occasion our Lord was asked which is
the greatest commandment of the Law, and he replied that it is to love
God with all our heart and the second is like it, to love our neighbour
as ourself. It is by doing
this that we gain eternal life. So this is the challenge of life. Our
problem is that we tend to love our possessions in place of loving God
and our neighbour. We can become so attached to material things for our
own comfort and self-aggrandisement that God and neighbour are easily
denied a look-in. Today's Gospel invites us to consider our attitude to
material possessions.
God made us
to know, love and serve him here on earth so as to see and enjoy him
forever in heaven. God’s plan is that we love him above all things
because he is the infinite God, and he has called us to a life that
shares in his own triune life. He has placed us on this earth and has
given us this material world to be our home. God intends this world of
ours to help us attain the purpose for which he created us and to be an
adequate home for everyone and not just for a select few. The goods of
the earth are meant by God for all and our right to earn and own
property and possessions is meant by God to ensure that
we are able to make adequate spiritual and material provision for
ourselves.
Generally each person is his own best judge as to what he needs, and by
earning and owning his own property he can make provision for what he
judges he needs to attain his God-given end. But the
danger is that a person, knowing he has a right to private property,
can gradually acquire a great deal of wealth to the detriment of
others. Indeed, a whole country can acquire more than it needs to the
detriment of other countries. Whole groups of countries can acquire far
more than they need while other groups of countries languish in
hopeless poverty. This situation goes against the plan of God who
intended everyone to benefit adequately from the goods of this
world.
The danger
is that those who have wealth may become so attached to it that they
are unwilling to accord to others their right to have sufficient for
their needs. The commandment of God is that we should love our
neighbour as ourself, and love is expressed by ensuring others have
what
they need. There is a further danger. Our love for material
possessions can not only make us reluctant to use those goods to help
those who are in need, but it can also lead us to various forms of
secret or even open theft. What then should be our attitude to the
material and
financial possessions we have? Beyond what we actually need, we ought
use our possessions for the sake of others. We are commanded by God to
love our neighbour as ourself, remembering too that there can be no
love without justice. That is not to say that we
need actually divest ourselves of whatever is beyond what we need, but
it does
mean that we whatever we have that we do not need we ought use for
others in need. This of
course includes our family and children or our parents, but it also
includes those in need beyond our family. We ought use our extra wealth
in some way to benefit those in need because God intends the goods of
the earth to be of adequate benefit to everyone. It is up to each
person to consider his situation in this matter. Are my possessions
serving those in need? How am I using what I own to benefit others in
need?
Our Gospel
passage today reminds us of how attachment to wealth can interfere not
only with love for others, but with the great love for God which should
mark our entire life. The rich young man came to our Lord asking what
more he needed to do to win eternal life. He had kept all God’s
commandments since his childhood. Our Lord with great love invited him
to leave all and follow him. But he went away sad, turning down the
inestimable gift of friendship with our Lord and of living in his
constant company (Mark
10: 17-27).
He did this because he had great wealth — which is to say because he
had great love for his wealth. He was too attached to it to
accept our Lord's invitation and give
God his full love.
Let us
resolve to put Christ first and to be very generous in the use we make
of what we come to own. Our material possessions are meant by God to
help us love him with all our heart and to love our neighbour as
ourself. The material world and its produce constitutes our God-given
home which God means us to use to attain the end for which we are made.
That end is love. The danger is that if we are not vigilant we can
easily become attached to the things we have, and this attachment can
replace or crowd out our attachment to God and to our neighbour in God.
When that happens, material possessions have served to set ourselves up
in God's place.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further Reading: The
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2401-2406
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Jesus, looking at him, loved
him" (Mark
10:17-30)
Commentary
by John Henry Newman
(1801-1890), priest, founder of a religious community
Parochial & Plain
Sermons 3, 9 (Edited by W. J. Copeland)
God beholds thee individually, whoever thou art. He
"calls thee by thy name." (Jn 10:3) He sees thee, and understands thee,
as He made thee. He knows what is in thee, all thy own peculiar
feelings and thoughts, thy dispositions and likings, thy strength and
thy weakness… Thou art not only His creature though for the very
sparrows He has a care (Mt 10:29)…, thou art man redeemed and
sanctified, His adopted son, favoured with a portion of that glory and
blessedness which flows from Him everlastingly unto the Only-begotten.
Thou art chosen to be His… Thou wast one of those
for whom Christ offered up His last prayer, and sealed it with His
precious blood. What a thought is this, a thought almost too great for
our faith! Scarce can we refrain from acting Sarah's part, when we
bring it before us, so as to "laugh" from amazement and perplexity (Gn
18:12). What is man, what are we, what am I, that the Son of God should
be so mindful of me? (Ps 8:5) What am I… that He should have changed my
soul's original constitution, new-made me…, and should Himself dwell
personally in this very heart of mine, making me His temple?
(Selected
by "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your aim should be that there be many souls in the midst of the world
who love God with all their heart. It's time to do your sums: how many
souls have you helped to discover that Love?
(The Forge,
no.898)
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What can the consecrated life give to the
mission of the Church?
The consecrated life participates in the mission of the Church by means
of a complete dedication to Christ and to one’s brothers and sisters
witnessing to the hope of the heavenly Kingdom. (CCC 931-933, 945)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.193)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-ninth
Sunday in Ordinary Time B: World
Mission Sunday
(October 22) Today let us think of Saint Mary Salome
(Saints)
Scripture today: Isaiah
53:10-11; Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22;
Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45
James
and John, the sons
of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do
for us whatever we ask of you." He replied, "What do you wish me to do
for you?" They answered him, "Grant that in your glory we may sit one
at your right and the other at your left." Jesus said to them, "You do
not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be
baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" They said to him,
"We can." Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give but is for
those for whom it has been prepared." When the ten heard this, they
became indignant at James and John. Jesus summoned them and said to
them, "You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the
Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority
over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever
wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be
first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not
come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for
many."
(Mark 10:35-45)
Pope
Benedict XVI’s message for World
Mission Sunday 2006:
Dear
Brothers and
Sisters, World Mission Sunday is an opportunity to reflect this year on
the theme: “Charity: soul of the mission”. Unless the mission springs
from a profound act of divine love, it risks being reduced to mere
philanthropy and social activity. God’s love for every person
constitutes the heart of the Gospel, and those who
welcome it in turn become its witnesses. This love is the love that was
given to us in Jesus. After his Resurrection Jesus gave the Apostles
the mission to proclaim the news of this love, and ever since the
Church has continued this same mission. It is the task of each
believer. Every Christian community is therefore called to make known
God who is Love.
God imbues
the entire creation and all human history with his love. But man sinned
and preferred himself to the love God had freely given, and so he fell.
But God did not abandon him but sent his Son to reveal his love for us
in even greater ways. Christ’s death on the cross is love in its most
radical form. It is from there that our definition of love must begin,
and in contemplating Christ on the Cross the Christian discovers his
life’s path. On the eve of his Passion Jesus gave to his disciples his
new commandment of love, that they love one another as he had loved
them. Our love for one another originates in the fatherly love of God,
and by living in God we are able to live a life of love.
Love,
then, is the principle which must inform every action and is the end to
which that action must be directed. Consequently, being missionaries
means loving God with all one’s heart, even to the point of dying for
him. It means stooping down to the needs of all, like the Good
Samaritan, especially the poorest, and herein lies the secret of
apostolic fruitfulness. Love is the soul of the Church’s mission and
the mission of every member of the Church. May the Virgin Mary sustain
the action of all members of the Church and help them in Christ to be
every more capable of true love, so that they may become sources of
living water in a spiritually thirsting world.
(My abridgement of the Pope’s message)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Whoever wishes to be great among you
will be your servant" (Mark 10:35-45)
Commentary by St Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274), Dominican theologian, Doctor of the Church
On the Apostles'Creed (Collationes In Symbolum
apostolorum, art. 4 § 64.70.72-76)
What need was there that the Son of God
should suffer for us? There was a great need; and indeed it can be
assigned to two reasons. The first is that it was a remedy against sin,
and the second is for an example of what we ought to do… From all this
then is seen the effect of the passion of Christ as a remedy for sin.
But no less does it profit us as an example… So if you seek an example
of charity, then, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's
life for one's friends." (Jn 15: 13)… If you seek an example of
patience, you will find it in its highest degree upon the Cross… Christ
suffered greatly upon the Cross… and with all patience, because, "when
he suffered, he did not threaten." (1P 2:23), "like a lamb led to the
slaughter, he opened not his mouth" (Is 53:7). "Let us persevere in
running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on
Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. For the sake of the joy that
lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame" (He 12:1-2)…
If you seek an example of humility, look upon him
who is crucified; although he was God, he chose to be judged by Pontius
Pilate and to be put to death… If you seek an example of obedience,
imitate him who was obedient to the Father unto death. (Ph 2:8) "For by
the disobedience of one person, that is to say Adam, many were made
sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just." (Rm
5:19). If you seek an example of contempt for earthly things, imitate
him who is the "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Rv 19:16), "in whom
are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col 2:3); on the
Cross he was stripped naked, ridiculed, spat upon, bruised, crowned
with thorns, and finally given to drink of vinegar and gall.
(Selected
by "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The privilege of being numbered among the children of God is the
greatest happiness there can be: and it is always undeserved.
(The Forge,
no.905)
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How are sins remitted?
The first and chief sacrament for the forgiveness of sins is Baptism.
For those sins committed after Baptism, Christ instituted the sacrament
of Reconciliation or Penance through which a baptized person is
reconciled with God and with the Church. (CCC 976-980, 984-985)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.200)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thirtieth
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(October 29) Today let us think of Saint Narcissus
(Saints)
Scripture today:
Jeremiah
31:7-9; Psalm 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6; Hebrews
5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52
As
Jesus was leaving
Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind
man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging. On hearing that
it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, son of
David, have pity on me." And many rebuked him, telling him to be
silent. But he kept calling out all the more, "Son of David, have pity
on me." Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." So they called the blind
man, saying to him, "Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you." He
threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus. Jesus said to him
in reply, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man replied to
him, "Master, I want to see." Jesus told him, "Go your way; your faith
has saved you." Immediately he received his sight and followed him on
the way. (Mark 10:46-52)
I think it
is St Alphonsus Ligouri who writes in one of his books that it is
almost impossible for a person to be saved without prayer. If that is
so in relation to being saved, how much more is it so in relation to
growing in holiness. Religious surveys indicate that the majority of
Catholics in our country are largely nominal.
That is to say,
only a minority of Catholics are coming to Mass every Sunday — a higher
number than is the case with other Christian denominations, but a
minority nevertheless. But let us ask a further question: of those of
us who fulfil the obligation of coming to Mass every Sunday, how many
are working generously at our spiritual life so as to attain the
maximum degree of friendship with our Lord to which we are called? We
have a limited time in life given to us. Our task is to use it to
attain the one thing necessary which is as deep a union with Jesus as
is possible. It is a wonderful service to God and the Church to
participate in and build up parish and diocesan life. It is essential
to be coming
to Mass every Sunday. But it is possible to do this and more besides
while just coasting along in our spiritual life, with little intention
of taking the means of attaining a much deeper relationship with Jesus
our Lord. To attain this holiness which is our calling, we must grow in
a life of genuine prayer. Let us consider the prayer of Bartimaeus.
Our Gospel
passage today places us in the scene of the blind man Bartimaeus
sitting by the road begging (Mark
10:46-52).
He was blind, without work, without disability benefits, and in a
helpless situation. He may not have had any family to support him. He
was very alive to his need for God, whereas many others in the
crowd mingling near to Jesus may not have been. He heard that Jesus was
passing by, and he called out to him for pity. That was a wonderful
prayer, simply calling out to Jesus from the depths of his need. It is
a model prayer, one we ought make our own. It resulted in his cure. Our
Lord is present to us every day, and we are in a profound need of him
and his grace. Let him not pass us by. Bartimaeus was blind, and so are
we in so many respects. We may be blind to our spiritual condition,
perhaps too content with ourselves, not often asking God’s pardon nor
going to Confession much because we do not feel that we have any need
of it. In effect, we may think that we are not guilty of much in God’s
sight. This lack of a sense of our own sinfulness will prevent us from
drawing near to our Lord in a truly intimate
way because we will feel
fairly self-sufficient — which is to say, as if we had no need of God.
We can be very blind to our own blindness, and unable to pray in the
way Bartimaeus prayed. We are often unable from the heart to call on
our Lord to have pity on us as did Bartimaeus. From his need Bartimaeus
called on Jesus and Jesus stopped and asked him to be brought to him.
The
blind beggar Bartimaeus will be teaching the readers of the Gospel how
to pray till the end of time. There is a much deeper affliction than
the one Bartimaeus suffered from and it is the affliction of sin. That
is the condition we must be freed from and only Jesus can free us from
it. He is the only Saviour of the world, for he takes away the sin of
the world. When he came among us he did cure the sick, he did raise the
dead, he gave sight to the blind, and many other things. But all of
this was meant as a sign of a far more profound salvation he was
bringing to man. It was salvation from sin. Just as Bartimaeus was
acutely conscious of his blindness and of the misery it was causing
him, so we need to be acutely conscious of the affliction of sin and of
the spiritual misery it causes us. Indeed it is the root cause of the
miseries of the world. So each of us and the entire world have to learn
to call on the name of Jesus for salvation and sanctification. In the
early Eastern Church there was a famous spiritual writer by the name of
Cassian who was able to distil the prayer life of the Eastern monks
into a brief prayer. It was , “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me
a sinner.” It is a wonderful prayer and very like the prayer of
Bartimaeus.
If
you want to deepen your life of prayer, one way is to pray in the way
Bartimaeus prayed, and with real fervour. Say the word “Jesus” over and
over, addressing Jesus as you say it. Jesus in Hebrew means God saves,
God is saving, God will save. God saves us in and through Jesus who is
his Son and our Lord. He saves especially from sin. Jesus, let me see.
Jesus have mercy on me a sinner. Jesus save me from my sins and my
disinterest and my spiritual lethargy. Jesus save me and lead me to
holiness. Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. So, let us
be like Bartimaeus and call on Jesus as he is passing by. He will hear
and answer our prayer just as he did for Bartimaeus.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.430-435
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“He began to cry out and say, 'Jesus, Son of David, have pity on
me'...” (Mark 10: 46-52)
Commentary by Saint Gregory the Great (about 540-604), Pope, Doctor of
the Church
(Homilies on the Gospels,
no. 2)
Scripture rightly presents us with this blind man seated at the edge of
the path and asking for alms, for Truth itself said, “I am the way” (Jn
14:6). Thus, whoever does not know the clarity of eternal light is
blind.
Even if he already believes in the Redeemer, he is seated at the edge
of the path. If he already believes but neglects to ask that eternal
light be given to him, and if he neglects to pray, this blind person
can be seated at the edge of the path, but he is not asking for alms.
But if he believes, if he knows the blindness of his heart and prays so
as to receive the light of truth, then he really is that blind man, who
is seated at the edge of the path and also asking for alms.
Thus, may the person who recognizes the darkness of his blindness and
who feels deprived of eternal light cry out from the bottom of his
heart, may he cry with all his soul: “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on
me!”
(Selected
by "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
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My Lord Jesus, grant that I may feel your grace and second it in such a
way that I empty my heart, so that you, my Friend, my Brother, my King,
my God, my Love... may fill it!
(The Forge,
no.913)
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What is the particular judgment?
It is the judgment of immediate retribution which each one after death
will receive from God in his immortal soul in accord with his faith and
his works. This retribution consists in entrance into the happiness of
heaven, immediately or after an appropriate purification, or entry into
the eternal damnation of hell. (CCC 1021-1022, 1051)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.208)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thirty-first
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(November 5) Today let us think of Saint Sylvia
(Saints)
Scripture: Deuteronomy
6:2-6; Psalm 18: 2-3, 3-4, 47, 51; Hebrews 7: 23-28; Mark 12:
28b-34
One
of the scribes came
to Jesus and asked him, "Which is the first of all the commandments?"
Jesus replied, "The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is
Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with
all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The
second is this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no
other commandment greater than these." The scribe said to him, "Well
said, teacher. You are right in saying, 'He is One and there is no
other than he.' And 'to love him with all your heart, with all your
understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as
yourself' is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." And
when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him,
"You are not far from the kingdom of God." And no one dared to ask him
any more questions.
(Mark
12:28b-34)
In some societies there is enormous
pressure on the young to attain academic success during school and then at
university. From the parents’ point of view, so much of their children’s
“success” in life
depends
on it. In our own society and culture there are various criteria of
“success” that are brought to
bear on people, and it is not
hard to be made to feel that one has been a failure. It has been said
that youth is the time of hopes while maturity is the time of regrets,
for very many people look back on their lives and mostly see failures
and lost opportunities. So then, success and failure in life is a
universal issue, and life is commonly judged in terms of success or
failure. The question is though, in what does success and failure
consist?
Society considers a person successful if he has attained considerable
eminence (and therefore remuneration) in his chosen profession,
or exercises considerable influence in society, or has had a very happy
marriage, or has had a very contented life, or few worries with his
children, or any one of many such things. A successful life is deemed
to be a
life of contentment and satisfaction, and to a point there is some
truth
in this. But what has God to say about it? What is the path to ultimate
success which if followed cannot go wrong in the final analysis? That
path is the one revealed by God, for he gives the key to life and all
reality.
God
has revealed that the key consists in loving him by keeping his
commandments. This key opens the door of ultimate success to all. One
can attain the
highest positions in society, one can attain considerable
influence over others, one can lead a fairly happy life free of the
misfortunes of many other people, and yet in the sight of God be a
failure. This will happen if a person makes little attempt to find
and do the will of God. Now, what is the will of God for every one of
us? Our Lord in today’s Gospel tells us (Mark
12:28b-34). In the first instance
we
are commanded to love God with our whole being, and secondly
we are to love our neighbour as ourself. A person can be very eminent
in his professional service of others while failing to perform this
service with much love. A person can enjoy a fortunate life in the
eyes of people and yet be lacking in love for God. On the other hand a
person of
relatively modest and even meagre abilities may experience many
failures in life due to it being rarely given him to occupy a suitable
niche,
and yet his life may be one of great advance in divine love. He may be
hidden from the notice
of society around him and even dismissed as something of a “nobody”,
and
yet the one thing necessary may be growing in him, which is divine
love. If
this is happening, a “nobody” such as this will be a success in the
eyes of God.
The heart
and soul of a successful human and Christian life is love. That is the
teaching of our Lord,
and it is therefore the key to a successful life in ultimate terms. A
person who is striving to love God with all his heart and his neighbour
as himself will, of course, use his talents for God and others in as
professional and competent a way as possible. This loving dedication of
himself may bring him “success” as society regards
it, but that worldly acclaim will be considered by him as basically a
side-issue. He knows that his true success ultimately lies
in the degree of love for God and neighbour that informs his life and
all he does. However,
whatever be the worldly success that comes to this or that person, the
average person in society is a little person. He is what we commonly
call a “nobody”. The unnoticed ones often experience bad luck,
misfortune for
a variety of reasons such as the loss of employment, bad health and
financial difficulties. At times there could be some marriage
difficulties and problems with the children in the family.
But despite all these upsets and disappointments and failures, the
so-called “nobody” can attain true success in life. That success
consists in growing in a profound and humble love of God and love of
neighbour whatever be his circumstances. This, more than anything, is
the project to set one's eyes on. Time and again we see this
love in the little people, while
it is often lacking in the rich and successful. It is this striving for
divine love which is open to all of us, rich and the poor alike, the
influential and the nobodies. Life’s true goal is the
holiness that consists in the love of Christ, and using the
means to attain it.
At the end
of life with moments to go before we appear before the judgment of God,
the only thing which will matter will be the degree to which we love
God with all our heart. That in turn will depend on the extent to which
in our ordinary daily duties over the course of life we have striven to
love God with our whole being and our neighbour as ourself. In this way
is the ordinary life of the little person transformed into a life of
ultimate grandeur. Let
us take the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as our model of
perfect love in the ordinary life.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1822-1829
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loving God produces the love of our
neighbour (Mark
12:28b-34)
Commentary by Saint Francis of Sales
(1567-1622), Bishop in Geneva and doctor of the Church
(Treatise on the
Love of God, 10:11)
As God created man to his own image and likeness (Gn 1:26), so did he
appoint for man a love after the image and resemblance of the love
which is due to his own divinity. He said: "You shall love the Lord,
your God, with all your heart; this is the greatest and the first
commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as
yourself." Why do we love God? "The cause for which we love God," says
S. Bernard, "is God Himself;" as though he had said: we love God
because he is the most sovereign and infinite goodness. And why do we
love ourselves in charity? Surely because we are the image and likeness
of God; and whereas all men are endowed with the same dignity, we love
them also as ourselves, that is, as being holy and living images of the
divinity.
For it is on that account… that he makes no difficulty to call himself
our father, and to call us his children; it is on that account that we
are capable of being united to his divine essence by the fruition of
his sovereign goodness and felicity; it is on that account that we
receive his grace, that our spirits are associated to his most Holy
Spirit, and made in a manner participant of his divine nature (2P
1:4)... And therefore the same charity which produces the acts of the
love of God produces at the same time those of the love of our
neighbour. And even as Jacob saw that one same ladder touched heaven
and earth, serving the angels both for descending and ascending (Gn
28:12), so we know that one same charity extends itself to both the
love of God and our neighbour.
(Selected
by "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
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If you follow faithfully the promptings of grace, you will yield good
fruit, lasting fruit for the glory of God. To be a saint necessarily
entails being effective, even though the saint may not see or be aware
of the results.
(The Forge,
no.920)
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In what does the final judgment consist?
The final or universal judgment consists in a sentence of happiness or
eternal condemnation, which the Lord Jesus will issue in regard to the
“just and the unjust” (Acts 24:15) when he returns as the Judge of the
living and the dead. After the last judgment, the resurrected body will
share in the retribution which the soul received at the particular
judgment. (CCC 1038-1041, 1058-1059)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.214)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thirty-second
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(November 12) St
Josaphat, bishop and martyr (1580-1623). Born in Ukraine
(Russia) of Orthodox parents, be became a Catholic and a Basilian monk.
Chosen bishop he worked faithfully for the unity of the Church until he
was martyred by a mob.
(Saints)
Scripture: 1 Kings
17:10-16; Psalm
146:7, 8-9, 9-10; Hebrews
9:24-28; Mark
12:38-44 or
12:41-44
In the course of his
teaching Jesus said to the crowds, "Beware of the scribes, who like to
go around in long robes and accept
greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honour in synagogues, and
places of honour at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as
a pretext recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe
condemnation." He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the
crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.
Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, "Amen, I say to you,
this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the
treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but
she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole
livelihood."
(Mark
12:38-44)
Let us notice in
our Gospel passage who are the people our Lord chooses to comment on.
In the first couple of sentences he speaks of the scribes. They studied
the Scriptures and the Law and were respected and given places of
honour at banquets and in synagogues. They loved the honour they were
accorded. But let us note that our Lord also says that they devoured
the
houses of widows while simultaneously appearing religious. So
in the midst of all their religious observance they avariciously
“devoured” the possessions of the poor (indeed, their very houses) — how they did this we are not told. They may have used their skill in
the Law subtly to defraud widows or prey on their religious spirit,
convincing
them to give of their means far beyond anything the Law intended.
Perhaps they did this while projecting the image of piety. In any case
they had no true love for the poor which had been commanded by God in
the Old Testament. Such were the scribes, or at least those of them
whom our
Lord chose to indict. Then the scene shifts to a poor widow, which is
to say to a representative of those our Lord said were materially
oppressed by the scribes. Our Lord is seated there in the Temple
observing how
“many rich people put in large sums” into the Temple treasury, and he
was not impressed. All they had done was to put in what they did not
need anyway. But then there came forward a poor widow, unnoticed, and
with practically nothing to offer. But all that tiny sum she had — which
was “her whole livelihood” — she put into the treasury for the worship
and honour of God (Mark
12:38-44).
When the Church canonizes a holy person she is not intending to say that
the only saints are those who have been formally canonized. Great as is the
holiness of the one who is canonized, there is nothing to prevent us from
presuming that not only are there other equally holy persons in heaven who are
unknown to us, but quite possibly many whose sanctity exceeds that of several
who have been canonized. They would be among those whom the Church thinks of on
the Feast of All Saints just before All Souls Day. Well then, our Lord holds up
before us this poor widow who gave to God everything she had to live on. She was
poor, very poor. She was completely detached from the material possessions she
had, and totally attached to God and his interests. She wanted to see God
honoured and glorified in his Temple, and she gave everything she had
for that
purpose. She had no husband, no children of hers are mentioned, and she
is unknown. She had lived her life
and now she was undoubtedly drawing near to its end. She was a very
holy person, and our Lord holds her up for the edification of his
disciples. She was an excellent example of what the Hebrew Old
Testament calls the “anawim”, the holy poor of
Yahweh who depend on him entirely for everything. She was poor in
spirit and poor in material possessions and so the Kingdom of heaven
was hers. How our Lord would have loved and admired her! There must
have been many such in the history of God’s people, for we remember how
when the infant Jesus was brought to the Temple he was met by the widow
prophetess Anna who spent all her time in the Temple. She too was an
example of the holy poor of Yahweh.
Our Lord
did not ask his disciples to be as poor as the widow, but he did expect
them to be just as detached as she was from material possessions. He
expects of his disciples that they love the poor and that they
resolutely
avoid the love of money and avarice. They
are to avoid being like the scribes who were looked on as good and
religious while loving money and disregarding the poor, indeed
prospering materially while the poor languished. Our Lord asks us to be
like him in his love for the poor and the needy. We remember how when
he was approaching the town of Nain and a large number of persons were
following him. Suddenly there came out a funeral procession, the
funeral of an only son of a widow. Full of compassion he stepped
forward, raised the dead young man and gave him back to his mother. Our
Lord loved the
poor and educated his disciples to love the poor. We remember how when
Judas left the Last Supper, some thought that perhaps he had gone to
give something to the poor. In fact, in his very Incarnation the Son of
God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, chose to become poor for
our sakes so that we might be rich. He became as men are and lowlier
still, dying on a cross. Let us ask our Lord for the grace to be poor
in spirit, to love the poor just as he loved the poor, and always to
serve the poor knowing that in loving and serving them we love and
serve Christ.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no. 2443-2449
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“Who are these that fly like clouds, and like doves to their nesting
places?”, asks the Prophet. And a certain author comments:
“Clouds come up
from the sea and from rivers, and after circling about or following
their course for a certain length of time, return once more to their
source.” And I say to you that this is what you have to be: a cloud
which makes the world fertile, making it live the life of Christ. Those
divine waters will bathe and drench the very depths of the earth, and
filter out the many impurities without themselves being dirtied. They
shall give forth sparkling springs which will later become streams and
mighty rivers able to slake the thirst of mankind. Afterwards you shall
return to your shelter, to your boundless Sea, to your God, knowing
that the fruits will continue to ripen thanks to the supernatural
watering done by your apostolate, and to the fruitfulness of the waters
of God which will last until the end of time.
(The Forge,
no.927)
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In what
way is the Father the source and the goal of the liturgy?
Through the liturgy the Father fills us with his blessings in the Word
made flesh who died and rose for us and pours into our hearts the Holy
Spirit. At the same time, the Church blesses the Father by her worship,
praise, and thanksgiving and begs him for the gift of his Son and the
Holy Spirit. (CCC 1077-1083, 1110)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.221)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thirty-third
Sunday in Ordinary Time B
(November 19) Today let us think of Saint Barlaam
(Saints)
Scripture:
Daniel
12:1-3; Psalm 16:5, 8, 9-10,
11; Hebrews 10:11-14,
18; Mark 13:24-32
Jesus
said to his disciples: "In those days after that tribulation the sun
will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and
the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens
will be shaken. "And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the
clouds' with great power and glory, and then he will send out the
angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the
earth to the end of the sky. "Learn a lesson from the fig tree. When
its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is
near. In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that
he is near, at the gates. Amen, I say to you, this generation will not
pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth
will pass away, but my words will not pass away. "But of that day or
hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only
the Father."
(Mark
13:24-32)
During the last
couple of years there has been discussion and controversy in New South
Wales about the importance of history in education. It has been claimed
that too few of the young gain a sense of Australian history and of the
history of the world. A connected aspect of this discussion has been
the very nature of historical study. What is it that we are seeking to
achieve in the study of history and in the teaching of history?
Setting aside the particular question of history in schools and
universities, I wonder how many professional students of history emerge
with anything resembling a philosophy of history, a view of the basic
elements that drive human history and of where human history is
heading. There have been many philosophies of human history and a fair
proportion of them have been disastrous — consider Marx, for instance,
or Hegel. Whatever of that personal observation, a knowledge of the
overarching
framework within which human history is played out is accessible to the
simplest Christian believer. It is not something which the Christian
presumes to work out by himself alone, but is derived directly from his
acceptance of the person of Christ and his teaching. The fundamental
issue in the history of mankind and in the life of every human person
is the choice of what is good and the rejection of what is wrong.
Within this basic moral and religious context, human history with its
convolutions, its rises and its falls, its successes and its failures,
is heading towards a definite climax. That climax is the
final coming of Jesus to judge the living and the dead. Christ is the
Lord of history and his Lordship will then be manifest. The issue in
human history is the acceptance or rejection of Christ as the Lord of
lords and
King of kings, played out in moral and religious choice.
It is of his final
coming at the end of the world that our Lord speaks in today’s Gospel
passage (Mark
13:24-32).
We are almost at the end of the Church’s Liturgical Year. We profess
every Sunday in the Nicene Creed that at the end of the world Christ
will come to judge the living and the dead, and then of his kingdom
there will be no end. No human being will escape this event and the
course of each of
us will be profoundly affected by it. Our eternal destiny will be
decided and confirmed. We shall be either saved or lost, and
forever. Let us not dismiss this as being in the mythical future. One
of the very striking experiences of life is how
one's sense of time changes as time passes. Time is a fascinating
feature of our mortal reality, and one of its stunning
qualities is its rapidity. Time passes, and it passes
quickly, very quickly. Indeed, so quickly does it pass that it can
produce a kind of cynicism in a person as to the value of the good
things of life such as friendships, holidays and other blessings. These
good things will soon pass away. Life will pass quickly and at the end
of
our life we shall probably look back with a species of wonderment at
the speed with which childhood, youth, adulthood, middle age and its
sequel have all passed away. All that is now left is a little time
before we are gone. So it is with all of human history. Time on the
grand scale will also pass rapidly. Consider this. There are many
elderly persons in the world who have reached their century in age. If
we imagine the lives of twenty such persons, one being born when the
other dies, this sucession of a mere twenty persons places us back in
the time of our Lord two millennia ago. The history of the world passes
quickly and each of us will see its end when Christ will come again.
The issue is, how shall we have lived in relation to the choice for
Christ, Christ who is the Lord? What will be the upshot for us of this
final
judgment?
As we ponder our
Lord’s words in which he predicts that he will come in the clouds amid
power and glory
(Mark 13:24-32), let us understand that
each day of our life is the opportunity we have to make a difference
to eternity. If we live with him we shall reign with him, and that his
kingdom will have no end is the one certain thing about the history of
the world. The world will end with the coming of the kingdom of God in
Christ. Let us so live that we will be found worthy of a place in that
eternal kingdom.
(E.J.Tyler)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"When you see these things
happening, know that he is near, at the gates." (Mark 13:24-32)
Comment by John Henry
Newman (1801-1890), priest, founder of a religious community,
theologian
Parochial and Plain
Sermons, Volume 4, n̊22 (Edited by W.J. Copeland)
Our Saviour gave this warning when He was leaving this
world,—leaving it, that is, as far as His visible presence is
concerned. He looked forward to the many hundred years which were to
pass before He came again. He knew His own purpose and His Father's
purpose gradually to leave the world to itself, gradually to withdraw
from it the tokens of His gracious presence. He contemplated, as
contemplating all things, the neglect of Him which would spread even
among his professed followers… He foresaw the state of the world and
the Church, as we see it this day, when His prolonged absence has made
it practically thought, that He never will come back…
He mercifully whispers into our ears, not to
trust in what we see, not to share in that general unbelief, not to be
carried away by the world, but to "take heed, watch, pray," and look
out for His coming. Surely this gracious warning should be ever in our
thoughts, being so precise, so solemn, so earnest. He foretold His
first coming, yet He took His Church by surprise when He came; much
more will He come suddenly the second time, and overtake men, now that
He has not measured out the interval before it, as then He did, but
left our watchfulness to the keeping of faith and love… We are not
simply to believe, but to watch; not simply to love, but to watch; not
simply to obey, but to watch; to watch for what? for that great event,
Christ's coming.
Whether then we consider what is the obvious meaning
of the word, or the Object towards which it directs us, we seem to see
a special duty enjoined on us, such as does not naturally come into our
minds. Most of us have a general idea what is meant by believing,
fearing, loving, and obeying; but perhaps we do not contemplate or
apprehend what is meant by watching… Now what is watching? … I conceive
it may be explained as follows: To watch for Christ… with Christ...
(Selected
by "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
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Practise and live the Holy Mass! You may be helped by a
consideration which that priest, in love, used to repeat to himself:
``Is it possible, my God, to take part in the Holy Mass and not be a
saint?'' And he would continue, ``Each day, in fulfilment of an old
promise, I will remain hidden in the Wound of Our Lord's Side!''
Shouldn't you do the same?
(The Forge,
no.934)
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What is the relationship between the
sacraments and faith?
The sacraments not only presuppose faith but with words and ritual
elements they nourish, strengthen, and express it. By celebrating the
sacraments, the Church professes the faith that comes from the
apostles. This explains the origin of the ancient saying, “lex orandi,
lex credendi,” that is, the Church believes as she prays. (CCC
1122-1126, 1133)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.228)
--------------------------------(Back
to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King
(Thirty-Fourth or Last Sunday in Ordinary Time B)
(November 26) Saint Leonard of Port Maurice
and Saint Sylvester Gozzolina
(Saints)
Scripture
today: Daniel 7:13-14;
Psalm 93:1, 1-2, 5; Revelation
1:5-8; John 18:33b-37
Pilate
said to Jesus,
"Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you say this on
your own or have others told you about me?" Pilate answered, "I am not
a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to
me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to
this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would
be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it
is, my kingdom is not here." So Pilate said to him, "Then you are a
king?" Jesus answered, "You say I am a king. For this I was born and
for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who
belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
(John 18:33b-37)
I remember years
ago being told by a priest many years older than myself that one reason
why, in his view, the feast of Christ the King had never taken on was
because people of our age had little feeling for royalty and kingship.
It was a feast — so he thought — that depended
too much on the concept
of kingship as it had been exercised in ages now gone. When he told me
this I thought there was good reason in what he said,
but then I
remembered that the kingship of Christ is a profoundly scriptural
notion. It is with very good reason that the feast of Christ the King
was instituted by the Church, for it sets forth something quite central
in
the mission of our Lord. The kingship of the Messiah had been
long predicted by the prophets and the Scriptures spoke at length about
the coming King and the Kingdom of God which he would establish. All
Israel looked forward to this future King, and because of the renown of
this prediction other nations of the ancient world also whispered and
murmured about
it. We remember that the Wise Men from the East came searching for the
King who had been born. The problem was that the expected King was the
object of many wild hopes of a very political character, and our Lord
fled on one occasion from the crowd because they wanted to come and
take him by force and make him King. The Messiah was deemed by many to
be a political liberator. Even our Lord’s closest disciples after his
very resurrection thought that he was going now to “restore” the
kingdom of Israel. It took the coming of the Holy Spirit for them to
understand that Christ’s kingdom was not of this world, and that is
exactly what our Lord told Pilate during his Passion. (John 18:33b-37)
After his
resurrection our Lord told his disciples that all authority in heaven
and on earth had been given to him. They were to go, therefore, to the
whole world and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The book
of Revelation refers to our Lord as the King of kings and the Lord of
lords. So many of the kings and lords of human history have founded
their kingships on lies and on force. Our Lord referred to them once
when he said that the kings of this world make their authority felt.
They demanded to be served at times as if they were gods, and we only
have to think of the likes of
Alexander the Great and many of the Roman Caesars to appreciate that.
Not so with you, our Lord told his disciples. Our Lord is King in that
he is the Truth, and all who belong to the truth listen to him. We
remember how at his transfiguration on the Mount the Father
stated that he was his beloved Son and all were to listen to him. He is
the ultimate authority for all
that is true, and the truth that he
utters is the truth that comes from God. So then, with love the
Christian follows Jesus as his King, as the King of kings and the Lord
of lords. On him we can base our entire life and every aspect of it. In
bringing him to the notice of the world around us we bring the One in
whom is every heavenly blessing. It is most important that we
understand this in the face of competing claims. Let us take the case
of Islam which claims for its founder the highest status in God's plan.
Cardinal Newman once wrote
that in this sense it is a type of the Antichrist. For the sake of the
whole world,
including for the adherents of Islam, each Christian must be convinced
that Christ is the King of kings.
This is the last
week of the Liturgical Year. Let us renew in our hearts our conviction
of the supreme position occupied by Jesus. He is Lord. Jesus Christ is
Lord. All who belong to the truth listen to his voice. Let us bring his
person and his voice every day to the world around us. This we do by
our example and our active influence on others.
(E.J.Tyler)
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“Jesus answered, 'My kingdom does not belong
to this world'.....” (John 18:36)
Commentary by St Augustine
(354-430), bishop of Hippo (North Africa) and doctor of the Church
Tractate 115 on
the Gospel of John, 2 (translated from the French)
Listen everybody, Jews and Gentiles… Listen, all the
kingdoms of the earth! I am not preventing you from ruling over this
world, “my kingdom is not of this world.” (Jn 18:36) So don’t be afraid
with that senseless fear which seized Herod when my birth was announced
to him… “No,” the Saviour says, “my kingdom is not of this world.” All
of you, come to a kingdom, which is not of this world; come by faith.
May you not be made cruel by fear. It is true that the Son of God,
speaking of the Father, says in a prophecy: “Through him, I was
established as king on Zion, his holy mountain.” (Ps 2:6) But that Zion
and that mountain are not of this world.
And what is his kingdom? It is they who believe in him, those to whom
he says: “You are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” But
he nevertheless wants them to be in the world; he prays to his Father:
“I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but to protect them
from the evil one.” (Jn 17:15) For he did not say: “My kingdom is not
in this world,” but rather: “It is not from this world. If my kingdom
were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from
being handed over.”
For his kingdom really is here on earth until the end of the world,
until the harvest of weeds is mingled with the good seed (Mt 13:24f.)…
His kingdom is not from here, for he is like a traveller in this world.
To those over whom he reigns, he says: “You do not belong to the world,
but I have chosen you out of the world.” (Jn 15:19) So they did belong
to this world when they were not yet his kingdom, and they belonged to
the prince of this world (Jn 12:3)… All who are born of Adam’s sinful
race belong to this world; all who were reborn in Jesus Christ belong
to his kingdom and no longer belong to this world. For “God has rescued
us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of
his beloved Son.” (Col 1:13)
(Selected
by "The Daily Gospel",
New
Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
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Shun public display. May your life be known to God, for holiness
passes unnoticed, even though it is most effective.
(The Forge,
no.941)
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How does the Church on earth celebrate
the liturgy?
The Church on earth celebrates the liturgy as a priestly people in
which each one acts according to his proper function in the unity of
the Holy Spirit. The baptized offer themselves in a spiritual
sacrifice; the ordained ministers celebrate according to the Order they
received for the service of all the members of the Church; the bishops
and priests act in the Person of Christ the Head. (CCC 1140-1144, 1188)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
no.235)
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