(Ninth Sunday Ordinary Time C)
(June 3) Saint
Charles Lwanga and his companions, martyrs of Uganda. This group
of 22 Africans who died for their faith in 1885-87 includes Charles
Lwanga, Joseph Mukasa, Judge Matthias Murumba and Andrew Kagwa, a
leading catechist. The tyrannical King Mwanga ordered the persecutions
in hatred of religion and because of their refusal to acquiesce in his
impure desires. He began by killing an Anglican missionary, Bishop
James Hannington, and several Christian converts in his court. When
Charles Lwanga and several others protested, Mwanga ordered them to be
dismembered and burnt alive. Many Christians of all denominations were
killed before Mwanga was overthrown in 1888. The martyrs, led by
Charles Lwanga are reputed to have sung hymns as they perished. They
were all canonised on October 18, 1964 by Pope Paul VI. They the
Protomartyrs of Sub Saharan Africa and Charles is the patron of African
young people. (Saints)
Scripture readings: Proverbs
8:22-31; Psalm 8:4-9; Romans
5:1-5; John 16:12-15
Jesus said to his
disciples: "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will
declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because
he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that
the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take
from what is mine and declare it to you." (John 16:12-15)
In
world literature there have been many autobiographies written, and many
in English literature. One of the most famous was that written in 1864
by John Henry Newman, entitled Apologia pro Vita Sua,
in which he defends himself against the charge of duplicity. For those
interested in the great figure of Newman, one of the very
significant pages in his autobiography is that which refers to his
adolescent conversion. At the age of fifteen he underwent a life-long
change to a religion founded on total assent to Christian dogma. He
looks back on that event and pinpoints for us the central doctrine
which he embraced at this conversion and which he calls “the
fundamental truth of religion.” It was the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity, that there is one God in three divine Persons.
On this basis
Newman gradually went on to embrace finally the fullness of Christian
doctrine, namely that which is taught by and found in the Catholic
Church. The point, though, which I wish to highlight is this milestone
in Newman's early life and which was a great grace from God. His
spiritual life became
grounded in an assent to and a realization of the central fact that has
been revealed, that there is one God in three divine Persons, each of
whom is that same one God. All too often in the lives of Christians
this doctrine is simply taken for granted in much the way a person may
take for granted the home in which he has been raised or the furniture
his family has constantly used. The very reality of one infinite and
all-powerful God is often yet to be appreciated, and the reality of the
Father, the reality of his divine Son, and the reality of the Holy
Spirit, each of whom is distinct as a divine person, but each of whom
is the same one God, is also yet to be appreciated. St Ignatius Loyola
in his famous Spiritual
Exercises encourages the retreatant to cultivate a profound
devotion to each of the three divine Persons. Every Catholic
family ought have this revealed fact as the soul of its life, and every
parent ought have the holy ambition to help his or her children to
discover in faith the reality of the one God in three Persons. Today is
the chance to realize this.
Every
Sunday after hearing the word of God proclaimed in the Scriptures and
in the homily we profess in the Nicene Creed our faith in the revealed
truth of one only God in whom there are three divine Persons. Each of
these persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit possesses the fullness
of the one divine nature. Each is utterly and really distinct from the
other as a person. There have been those who have wrongly thought of
the three divine persons as simply three different appearances of the
one God or merely different modes in which the one God has involved
himself with us. No,
the three divine persons are objectively separate from one another
as persons because of the distinct and objective relationships they
have with each
other. The Father is the eternal God and the origin of all and for that
reason he is called by Christ the Father. He generates the Son from all
eternity and the Son is generated by him, and in being thus generated
the Son, while being a distinct person, is nevertheless the full being
of the Father. Just as the Father is the one
God, so is the Son the same one God. The two are in an eternal
embrace of boundless love which proceeds and rises from them together.
That divine love between the Father and the Son is the third divine
person whom Christ called the Holy Spirit, or, in today’s Gospel, the
Spirit of truth (John 16:12-15). He, the Holy Spirit,
while being a distinct third person is the same one God as is the
Father and as is the Son. He is the Lord
and Giver of Life, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has
spoken through the Scriptures which he inspired and he guides the
Church towards a full understanding of revealed truth. The Father so
loved the world and each of us that he sent his only begotten Son to
save the world by his ministry and above all by his death and
resurrection and ascension into heaven. From there the Father and the
Son sent the Holy Spirit upon the Church to bring the life of the most
holy Trinity to mankind through and in the ministry and sacraments of
the Church.
I
mentioned that all too often we lack a realization of the Holy Trinity,
of one God in three divine persons. But too often we also fail to
realize that God has immersed us in his own divine and triune life. At
our baptism and in each of the Sacraments this life of the Holy Trinity
passes into the heart and soul of each of us, which is to say that the
Holy Trinity comes to dwell within us. With this divine indwelling we
are enabled to become
more and more like God in holiness. This is the wonder of membership in
the Church. Today on this feast of the holy Trinity let us ask for the
grace to appreciate the great gift of God and to work daily for the
fulfilment of our high vocation.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, nos. 1077-1109, 109-119, 249-260
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Like the good sons of Noah,
throw the mantle of charity over the defects you see in your father,
the Priest.
(The Way,
no.75)
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How does
the Church nourish the moral life of a Christian?
The Church is the community in
which the Christian receives the Word of
God, the teachings of the “Law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2), and the
grace of the sacraments. Christians are united to the Eucharistic
sacrifice of Christ in such a way that their moral life is an act of
spiritual worship; and they learn the example of holiness from the
Virgin Mary and the lives of the Saints. (CCC 2030-2031, 2047)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.429)
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The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ C
(Tenth Sunday Ordinary Time C)
Prayer for today:
Lord
Jesus Christ, you gave us the eucharist as the memorial of your
suffering and death.
May our worship of this sacrament of your
body and blood help us to experience the salvation you won for us
and the peace of the kingdom where
you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.
(June 10) Today let us think of St. Getulius and Companions,
as well as St Ithamar
(Saints)
Saint Landry of Paris
Saint Landry (or Landeric) is known mainly for his work with the sick.
From the time he was consecrated Bishop of Paris in 650, he devoted
himself to their care — founding the city's first hospital, dedicated
to St Christopher, next to Notre Dame Cathedral. His generosity was so
great that in times of famine, Landry sold or pawned the sacred vessels
and his own furniture in order to relieve the suffering of the poor.
Together with 23 other bishops he subscribed to the charter Clovis II
gave to Saint-Denis Abbey in 653. St Landry died in 661. The hospital
changed its name to the Hotel Dieu, and exists to this day. He was
buried in the church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, then called St
Vincent's, where his relics, except two bones given to the parish of
Saint-Landry in 1408, are kept in a silver shrine. He is honoured with
an office in the new Paris Breviary.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Genesis
14:18-20; Psalm 110:1, 2, 3, 4; 1 Corinthians
11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17
Jesus spoke to the
crowds about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be
cured. As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and
said, "Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding
villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a
deserted place here." He said to them, "Give them some food
yourselves." They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have,
unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people." Now the men
there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples,
"Have them sit down in groups of about fifty." They did so and made
them all sit down. Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and
looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and
gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and
were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they
filled twelve wicker baskets. (Luke 9:11b-17)
Whenever we read the
Holy Scriptures we must bear in mind that they are the fruit of the
action of a single divine author, the Holy Spirit. If you read several
works of a particular author you will see similarities in those
different works. One result of this consideration is that what we read
in one part of the Scriptures reminds us of
similarities that we notice in another part, simply because all parts
of the Scriptures and therefore all similarities have the same divine
author. Those similarities across the Scriptures throw light especially
on the person and teaching of our Lord because he is the great
centrepiece of the entire Scriptures. Our Gospel today (Luke 9:11b-17)
provides us with a case
in point. Our Lord by the power of his simple word fed five thousand
men with a mere five loaves and two fish. There is at least one other
instance in the Gospels of this kind of miracle when he fed a crowd of
four thousand — and in one of his conversations with his disciples he
refers to both events. It was obvious that if he chose to he could
effortlessly feed all of God’s people. Such is the power of his divine
word. Undoubtedly many of those who witnessed this were reminded of God
feeding his people in the wilderness on their way to the promised land.
God fed them from heaven then with manna in the desert, just as he did
through the word of Christ in our Gospel event today. St John tells us
in his Gospel that the next day our Lord told the people that in fact
he himself is the bread come down from heaven, the true bread that
gives life to the world. That is to say, Christ chose to describe
himself in terms of the bread with which he himself had fed the crowds
and in terms of the manna with which God had nourished his people in
the wilderness. God could and would provide for all his chosen people
on their journey to heaven, and this he does in the person of Christ.
Now, can we pinpoint Christ feeding the people of God everywhere and
through all the ages with the bread of heaven which is himself? We can,
and it is the holy Eucharist in which is contained every heavenly
blessing.
The account of the
manna coming from God in the desert is contained in the book of Exodus.
Also in the book of Exodus is the account of the appearance of God to
Moses on Mount Sinai and the witnessing by the people of the awesome
phenomena associated with that presence of God. There was thunder and
lightning and a shuddering spectacle. No faith was required to be
convinced that it was indeed the living God who was present on the
Mountain meeting with Moses and giving to him the Ten Commandments.
When Christ the Son of God came, he bore with him none of the spectacle
of that past occasion. St Paul tells us that though he was in the form
of God he put that aside and became as men are, and humbler still. But
there was a further surprise to come and it was that the Word made
flesh would be our constant food for all the generations to come. He
himself would be our manna from heaven. He himself would be the loaves
distributed to all his spiritually hungry people. He would have himself
even look like mere bread. The difference is that this bread is not
mere bread as was the manna and as were the loaves of today’s Gospel.
This bread, by the word of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, has
been changed into the body and blood, the soul and the divinity of the
risen Jesus. Jesus, whole and entire in all his human and divine
reality, is given to us in the holy Eucharist, and it is this same
Jesus under the appearances of bread who remains with us in our
tabernacles day and night in our parish churches. The living Object and
divine Source of the Church and of all creation is contained in the
tiny host. Indeed, the living God made man is not just in that tiny
host, he is that tiny and humble host. Bread is there no longer, but
only Jesus. That vulnerable host is the Object of the Church’s constant
adoration, and should be unceasingly recognized by each of us as the
summit and the source of our whole Christian life. Let us remember this
constantly.
Because this requires
faith in the word of Christ, so often we ignore his real presence. We
cannot see Christ’s physical person but only the appearance of bread
and so all too often we act as if we are in the presence of mere bread.
We forget what has happened as a result of Christ’s word and the power
of the Holy Spirit. It has often been claimed that the reverence
displayed by the average Muslim in his mosque is greater than the
reverence shown by the average Catholic in his church, even though in
his church there is present the Lord of lords and the King of kings.
Let us resolve to distinguish ourselves constantly by our lively faith
in the real presence of Christ in the holy Eucharist and by our
constant reverence for his divine person there.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1373-1381
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First, prayer; then, atonement;
in the third place, very much 'in the third place', action.
(The Way, no.82)
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What does “Decalogue” mean?
Decalogue means “ten words” (Exodus 34:28). These words sum up the Law
given by God to the people of Israel in the context of the Covenant
mediated by Moses. This Decalogue, in presenting the commandments of
the love of God (the first three) and of one's neighbour (the other
seven), traces for the chosen people and for every person in particular
the path to a life freed from the slavery of sin. (CCC 2056-2057)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.436)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Lord, hear my voice
when I call to you. You are my help;
do not cast me off, do
not desert me, my Saviour God. (Ps 26: 7.9)
Almighty
God, our hope and our strength, without you we falter.
Help
us to follow Christ and to live according to your will.
We ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(June
17) Today let us think of Saints Teresa and Sancia of
Portugal
(Saints)
Saint Ranier of Pisa
Born in 1117, the son of prosperous merchants, St Rainier enjoyed a
wild youth. But when he was about 23 his aunt introduced him to a monk
who persuaded him there was more to life than dissipation and
self-indulgence. St Ranier's change of heart was so dramatic, his
parents feared for his sanity. He walked barefoot, ate only on Sundays
and Thursdays and drank only water. However after a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, he returned in a calmer state and spent the rest of his life
living quietly in monasteries and occasionally preaching. Many healings
and conversions are attributed to him. He is the patron saint of Pisa.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: 2 Samuel 12:7-10,
13; Psalm 32:1-2, 5, 7, 11; Galatians 2:16, 19-21; Luke
7:36-8:3
A Pharisee invited
Jesus to dine with him, and he entered the Pharisee’s house and
reclined at table. Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned
that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an
alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping
and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with
her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment. When the
Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself, “If this man
were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is
touching him, that she is a sinner.” Jesus said to him in reply,
“Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Tell me, teacher, ” he said.
“Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred
days’ wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay
the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?”
Simon said in reply, “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was
forgiven.” He said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then he turned to
the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I entered
your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed
them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a
kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered.
You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with
ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven because she
has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves
little.” He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The others at table
said to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” But he said
to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Afterward he
journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and
proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. Accompanying him were
the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and
infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone
out, Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and many
others who provided for them out of their resources. (Luke 7:36-8:3)
The Christian is so
familiar with the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins coming from the
person of Christ that there is a very real danger of failing to
appreciate the wonder of it. The Catholic knows that in the plan of God
the ordinary way in which Christ forgives our sins regularly is in the
Sacrament of Penance, accompanied, of
course, by our own genuine sorrow for sin. If, as we should, we
approach this Sacrament very regularly the danger may lie in the grace
of the forgiveness of sins being taken for granted and so ignored. For
this reason
our Gospel scene today is very important. Christ forgives
the sins of the “sinful woman” to her great consolation and to the
astonishment of the others at table with him. They said to themselves,
“Who is this who even forgives sins?” (Luke 7:36-8:3) For those who witnessed
our Lord doing this, it was a spectacle of great wonder. There had been
nothing like it in all Israel’s history. No figure in their past took
on himself so effortlessly the authority to forgive sins. Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob had not presumed to do this, nor had Moses and the
prophets, nor had John the Baptist who had instituted a baptism for the
forgiveness of sins. Our Lord said to the Pharisees that the woman had
been guilty of many sins and they knew this. Her life was profoundly
burdened with her many sins and her sorrow at the feet of Jesus bore
testimony to that burden, just as it also bore testimony to the love
she felt for Jesus who was such a manifest presence of God. At a word
he cleansed her of her sins. The grace of reconciliation with God
flooded her soul, whereas the Pharisees who were so critical of her and
indeed of our Lord himself remained in their sins. Her loving
repentance opened her up to the grace of God. She became part of the
kingdom of God’s grace which our Lord went from one town and
village to another to preach.
Pope
John Paul II once
said that the Catholic religion is a religion of God’s grace. It is
based on the grace of God and it continually offers the grace of God.
It is this grace which was received by the sinful woman at a word from
Christ, and it is the offer of this grace which our Lord was
proclaiming in preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God. In him
the Kingdom of God had come, and the benefit to man of this is the free
gift of God’s grace which makes him right before God. It justifies him.
We are reminded of this in today’s Gospel. God has done wonderful
things for us and continues to do them for us. He sustains our world
and gives to us the numerous blessings we enjoy. It all comes from him.
But the most wonderful work of his love is the gift of his grace in
justifying us and making us right with him. We are born into the world
unreconciled with him due to the effects of the sin of our first
parents, and burdened with tendencies that take us to sin and to death.
Because of the death and resurrection of Christ the justifying
grace of God is immediately and constantly available to us. In the
first instance it comes to us in the gift of the Holy Spirit at our
baptism and then during life it is renewed and strengthened in the
other sacraments, especially in the Sacraments of the Eucharist and
Penance. This grace of God is the merciful and freely given act of God
which takes away our sins and makes us just and holy in our whole
being. It is a new birth which at baptism transforms us into the image
of Christ and gives us the gifts to become more and more transformed
into his likeness. While our baptism does not take away the tendency to
sin, it does give us the supernatural gifts to resist this tendency and
gradually to put on the mind of Christ and so replace sin with
holiness. It implants in our souls a share in the divine life of God
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, making us holy and like God. Grace
comes from God, it is his gift, and it remains habitually with us
unless we renounce it by serious sin. It is the beginning and the basis
of further specific graces enabling our free cooperation with God in
living for him and in doing his work here on earth
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'Mary
chose the better part', we read in the
holy Gospel. There she is, drinking in the words of the Master.
Apparently idle, she is praying and loving. Then she accompanies Jesus
in his preaching through towns and villages.
Without prayer, how difficult it is to accompany him!
(The Way, no.89)
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What is the meaning of the words of our
Lord, “Adore the Lord your God and worship Him alone” (Matthew 4:10)?
These words mean to adore God as the Lord of everything that exists; to
render to him the individual and community worship which is his due; to
pray to him with sentiments of praise, of thanks, and of supplication;
to offer him sacrifices, above all the spiritual sacrifice of one’s own
life, united with the perfect sacrifice of Christ; and to keep the
promises and vows made to him. (CCC 2095-2105, 2135-2136)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.443)
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The Birth of St John the Baptist
(Twelfth Sunday Ordinary Time C)
(June 24) Birth
of St. John the Baptist Jesus called John the greatest of
all those who had preceded him: “I tell you, among those born of women,
no one is greater than John....” But John would have agreed completely
with what Jesus added: “Yet the least in the kingdom of God is
greater than he” (Luke 7:28). John spent his time in the desert, an
ascetic. He began to announce the coming of the Kingdom, and to call
everyone to a fundamental reformation of life. His purpose was to
prepare the way for Jesus. His baptism, he said, was to express
repentance and ask forgiveness. But One would come who would baptize
with the Holy Spirit and fire, and he declared himself not to be worthy
even to carry his sandals. His attitude toward Jesus was that “He must
increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30). John was humbled to find
among the crowd of sinners who stepped forward for his baptism the one
whom he already knew to be the Messiah. “I need to be baptized by you”
(Matthew 3:14b). But Jesus insisted, “Allow it now, for thus it is
fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15b). Jesus,
true and humble, human as well as the eternal God, wished to do what
was required of any righteous Jew. The greatness of John, his pivotal
place in the history of salvation, is seen in the emphasis Luke gives
to the announcement of his birth and the event itself—both made
prominently parallel to the same occurrences in the life of Jesus. John
attracted countless people (“all Judea”) to the banks of the Jordan,
and it occurred to some people that he might be the Messiah. But he
constantly deferred to Jesus, even to encouraging some of his followers
to become the first disciples of Jesus. Perhaps John’s image of the
coming of the Kingdom of God did not coincide perfectly with the
unfolding public ministry of Jesus. For whatever reason, he sent his
disciples (when he was in prison) to ask Jesus if he was indeed the
Messiah. Jesus’ answer showed that the Messiah was to be a figure like
that of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah. John himself would share in
the pattern of messianic suffering, losing his life to the revenge of
Herodias. (Saints)
God our Father, the
voice of John the Baptist challenges us to repentance and points the
way to Christ the Lord. Open our ears to his message and free our
hearts to turn from our sins and receive the life of the Spirit. We ask
this through Christ our Lord in the Holy Spirit.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Isaiah
49:1-6; Psalm 139:1b-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15; Acts
13:22-26; Luke 1:57-66, 80
When the time
arrived for Elizabeth to have her child she gave birth to a son. Her
neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy
toward her, and they rejoiced with her. When they came on the eighth
day to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zechariah
after his father, but his mother said in reply, “No. He will be called
John.” But they answered her, “There is no one among your relatives who
has this name.” So they made signs, asking his father what he wished
him to be called. He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,”
and all were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue
freed, and he spoke blessing God. Then fear came upon all their
neighbours, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill
country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart,
saying, “What, then, will this child be?” For surely the hand of the
Lord was with him. (Luke 1: 57-66,
80)
In each of the
Gospels John the Baptist is presented as the one who was called by God
to announce the coming of the Messiah and to prepare the people to
receive him. During his public ministry our Lord referred to John as a
great and holy prophet and the people also accepted him as such. On one
occasion when questioned by the religious leaders as to his identity
our Lord appealed to the testimony of John the Baptist about him. This
silenced the leaders because they knew that the people accepted John as
a prophet. As did the authors of the other Gospels, so too St Luke in
writing
his acknowledged the eminence of John the Baptist in
the unfolding of God’s salvific plan. In searching for the facts of his
Gospel history Luke narrated significant details that associated John
with our Lord not only in the inauguration of our Lord’s public
ministry, but in the inauguration of our
Lord’s very life too. John was
a great prophet whose birth was predicted by the angel of God only a
little before the annunciation of the birth of Jesus. Through his
mother Elizabeth John was a relative of the Virgin Mary, and therefore
a relative of Jesus Christ himself. In his mother’s womb he was made
holy at the coming of Mary who bore in her womb the unborn Redeemer. At
her arrival bearing the Christ-child, the Holy Spirit filled the soul
of the unborn John, and inspired his mother Elizabeth to utter her
words of praise of the Virgin Mary her young kinswoman. St Luke tells
us that the hand of the Lord was with him as he grew up, and in some
way he lived for God in the wilderness preparing for his mission which
in due course was revealed to him (Luke 1:57-66, 80). We read of other
prophets in the Old Testament who were called to their work at a
certain point in their lives, but John was chosen and sanctified from
before his very birth. He must have attained a very high holiness and
he had great impact on the vast numbers who came to him. We read in the
Acts of the Apostles how on his missionary journeys Paul encountered
disciples of John the Baptist who were unaware of his witness to
Jesus. The point here is that today we celebrate a great saint, a great
prophet who in his own person and work gave to the Old Testament its
climax in witnessing to the promised Messiah. He was the last, the
greatest and the holiest of the prophets, and in him the holiness of
the Old Testament reached its crescendo. His very precise
identification of the person of Jesus as the promised one gave to the
long revelation that preceded him its specific meaning.
John
summed up the Old Testament and pointed to the New. The prophets before
John prophesied a redemptive mission for God’s chosen people. In and
through this people all the nations of the earth would be blessed by
God in the fulness of time. A Messiah was coming and various features
of his figure were hinted at and outlined. We think of the Suffering
Servant of the later parts of the Book of Isaiah. We think of the
glorious figure of the Son of Man in the Book of Daniel. We think of
the predictions of the future offspring of David and how in him
the throne of David would never end. We think of the future
Prophet referred to by Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy. All were to
listen to him. We think of the coming Shepherd whom God would raise up
to care for his people. We think of the new covenant and the new heart
of flesh for the chosen people prophesied in the Book of Jeremiah. But
these predictions were not precise in their delineation. It was John
who made them precise. He pointed to Jesus as the one who would fulfill
all the prophecies and expectations of God’s chosen people. In this he
will forever be an outstanding model for every Christian. By his
personal holiness and the fulfilment of his God-given vocation to give
glory to Christ he is our model. We look at John and he tells us to
look at the person of Jesus. The Gospels preserve the record of that
witness to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world, as the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire,
as one who while he followed after John was before him, and as the one
whose
sandals he himself was not worthy to undo. John's holy life gave total
credibility to that witness. So in thinking of John we pass on to think
immediately of the person of Jesus, and his witness to Jesus is the
sign of a true
saint. He gave glory to Jesus and led men to Jesus. So thinking of this
great saint and prophet let us think of the One from whom he received
his holiness and his mission: Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah, true God and
true
man. He is God the Son and is the same being and nature as the Father.
He is a man like us in all things except sin and is the redeemer and
saviour of the world. He is the one we must live for and bear witness
to in all the duties and events of everyday life. It is by a life
of integrity, consistency and love for Jesus that like John the Baptist
we too will be able to give effective witness to Christ, the glorious
redeemer of man.
(E.J.Tyler)
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It is Jesus who speaks: 'Amen I say to you:
ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall
be opened to you.'
Pray. In what human venture could you have greater guarantees of
success?
(The Way,
no. 96)
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Why did God “bless the Sabbath day and
declare it sacred” (Exodus 20:11)?
God did so because on the Sabbath day one remembers God’s rest on the
seventh day of creation, and also the liberation of Israel from slavery
in Egypt and the Covenant which God sealed with his people. (CCC
2168-2172, 2189)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.450)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week: All nations, clap your
hands. Shout with a voice of joy to God. (Ps 46:2)
Father, you call your
children to walk in the light of Christ.
Free us from darkness and keep us in the radiance of your truth.
We ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(July 1) Today let us think of Blessed Junipero
Serra and Saint Oliver
Plunkett
Junípero
Serra (1713-1784) the founder of the Missions in California. He
was born on the island of Majorca, part of the kingdom of Spain, on the
24th of November, 1713. At the age of sixteen, he became a 
monk
of the order of St. Francis, and the new name of Junípero was
then substituted for his baptismal name of Miguel José. After
entering the convent, he went through a collegiate course of study, and
before he had received the degree of Doctor, was appointed lecturer
upon philosophy. He became a noted preacher, and was frequently invited
to visit the larger towns of his native island in that capacity.
Junípero was thirty-six years of age when he determined
to become a missionary in the New World. In 1749 he crossed the ocean
in company with a number of Franciscans, among them several who
afterward came with him to California. He remained but a short time in
the City of Mexico, and was soon sent a missionary to the Indians in
the Sierra Madre, in the district now known as the State of San Luis
Potosi. He spent nine years there, and then returned to the City of
Mexico where he stayed for seven years, in the Convent of San Fernando.
In 1767, when he was fifty-four years of age, he was appointed to the
charge of the Missions to be established in Upper California. He
arrived at San Diego in 1769, and, with the exception of one journey to
Mexico, he spent all the remainder of his life here. He died at the
Mission [San Carlos Borromeo] of Carmel, near Monterey, on the 28th of
August, 1784, aged seventy- one years. Ruins of the Mission San Carlos
as seen in 1882 are shown in the picture below. Our knowledge of
Serra's character is derived almost
exclusively from his biography by Palou, who was also a native of
Majorca. Palou, also a Franciscan and his disciple, came
across
the Atlantic with him. He was his associate in the college of San
Fernando, his companion in the expedition to California, his successor
in the Presidency of the Missions of Old California, his subordinate
afterward in New California, his attendant at his death-bed, and his
nearest friend for forty years or more. Under the circumstances, Palou
had the right to record the life of his preceptor and superior.
Junípero Serra, as we ascertain
his
character directly and inferentially in his biography, was a man to
whom his religion was every thing. All his actions were governed by the
ever-present and predominant idea that life is a brief probation, with
eternal perdition on one side and salvation on the
other. Earth for its own sake had few joys for him. His soul did not
recognize this life as its home. He turned with dislike from nearly all
the sources of pleasure in which the polished society of the world
delights. 
He was habitually
serious. He
delighted in no joyous books. Art or poetry never served to sharpen his
wits, lighten his spirit, or solace his weary moments. The sweet
devotional poems of Fray Luis de Leon, and the delicate humour of
Cervantes, notwithstanding the genuine piety of both, were equally
strange to him. The rights of man and the birth of chemistry did not
withdraw his fixed
gaze from the other world, which formed the constant subject of his
contemplation. It was not sufficient for him to abstain from positive
pleasure; he considered it his duty to inflict upon himself bitter
pain. He ate little, avoided meat and wine, preferred fruit and fish,
never complained of the quality of his food, nor sought to have it more
savory. He often lashed himself with ropes, sometimes of wire; he was
in the habit of beating himself in the breast with stones, and at times
he put a burning torch to his breast. These things he did even while
preaching or at the close of his sermons, his purpose being, as his
biographer says, “not only to punish himself but also to move his
auditory to penitence for their own sins.” Serra and his
biographer did not allow the Protestant doctrine that there have
been no miracles since the Apostolic age. They imagined that the power
possessed by the chief disciples of Jesus had been inherited by the
Catholic priests of their time, and they saw wonders where their
contemporary Protestant clergymen like Conyers, Middleton, and
Priestly saw
nothing save natural mistakes. Serra’s religious conviction found in
him a congenial mental constitution. He was even- tempered, temperate,
obedient, zealous, kindly in speech, humble and quiet. His cowl covered
neither greed, guile, hypocrisy, nor pride. he had no quarrels and made
no enemies. He sought to be a monk, and he was one in sincerity. Even
those who think that he made mistakes
of judgment
in regard to the nature of existence and the duties of man to society,
must admire his earnest, honest and good character. (Saints)
Saint Oliver
Plunkett Martyr and Archbishop. St Oliver Plunkett was born into
an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family at Loughcrew in County Meath on 1
November 1625. This was during the Penal Laws when the Catholic Church
and her ministers were suppressed. The faith was not allowed to be
practised openly and the celebration of Mass and the various Sacraments
was banned. Oliver went to Rome in 1647 to study for the priesthood and
was ordained in 1654. After three years at San Gerolamo della Carita he
was appointed professor of theology in the College of Propaganda Fide.
In 1669 he was appointed as Archbishop of Armagh. He worked tirelessly
in the pastoral care of his flock. At first he was able to work openly
but later, when the political situation changed, he was obliged to go
into hiding. Even then, however, at great peril to himself, he
continued to minister to his people. In 1679 Archbishop Plunkett was
arrested on a charge of treason. False witnesses testified against him
but a jury in Ireland, made up entirely of Protestants would not
convict him. He was transferred to London and tried there for treason.
False witnesses were brought against him, (several of whom were later
also executed for other crimes) he was convicted and sentenced to be
hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. Oliver Plunkett publicly forgave
all those who were responsible for his death on this day in 1681. His
body is at Downside. His head is kept in a shrine at St Peter's Church
in Drogheda. Oliver Plunkett was beatified in 1920 and canonised in
1975. In 1979, Pope John Paul II venerated the relic of St Oliver
Plunkett during the Drogheda part of his Papal visit to Ireland.
The
Feast
of St Oliver Plunkett is celebrated each year on the anniversary of his
death. Special celebrations are held on this date in Drogheda. A
procession of the Saint's relic is made from Our Lady of Lourdes
Church, Hardman's Gardens to the Church of St Peter, West Street. A
special Mass in honour of St Oliver Plunkett is held in St Peter's
Church on the last Friday of each month at 7.30pm. (Note: Several books
and websites list St Oliver's feast day as 11 July. Others give 1 July
as the date. One mentions both dates as his feast day in different
parts of the same entry. (The Archdiocese of Armagh celebrates it
today.) (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: 1 Kings 19:16b,
19-21; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-11; Galatians
5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62
When the days
for
Jesus’ being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to
journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way
they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there,
but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey
was Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,
“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?”
Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village.
As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, “I will
follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and
birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his
head.” And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, let
me go first and bury my father.” But he answered him, “Let the dead
bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” And
another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell
to my family at home.” To him Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to
the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of
God.” (Luke
9:51-62)
In an age in
which
so very many are dependent on the computer and on the Internet, we all
fear the virus. The virus, coming in from cyberspace, attacks computer
programs and causes the breakdown of our information technology. Let
that be an image of a certain kind of spiritual virus causing a
breakdown of the spirit of Catholicism. In our Gospel text today St
Luke narrates our Lord’s exchange with three prospective disciples who,
if we read between the lines, seem to lack the full obedience of faith
which our Lord was looking for. We have the
impression that they judge
other things somewhat to supercede our Lord’s call. Let their words
remind us of how private judgment can complicate the obedience which
should characterize faith in Jesus. The obedience of faith is of the
essence of Christianity, and it is in this sense that the famous
Cardinal Newman wrote that authority and obedience are of the essence of
religion. God has revealed himself to man supremely and completely in
Christ. The man Jesus is God revealing himself to us, and the perennial
issue till the end of time is, how are we to respond to the great God
who thus reveals himself? We are called to respond to him with the
obedience of faith, which means, firstly, the full surrender of
ourselves to Christ in faith. We do not see that full surrender in the
three disciples our Lord speaks with in our Gospel passage today
(Luke 9:51-62). But there is a further
aspect of this surrender of self which needs to be stressed. It is that
this personal surrender in faith must be expressed in a total
acceptance of the truth revealed by Christ. We assent to his word
because of his authority as the divine Truth itself. The man Jesus is
God, and so our response to him is unreserved faith expressed in total
assent and obedience to his word.
However, there is more to the spirit of Catholicism than
this. What marks the Catholic mind is the recognition that the living though
unseen Jesus continues to teach with a visible voice, and that voice is
the voice of the Church he founded. This Church is the Catholic Church which is
Christ’s body in space and time. Christ lives in his Church not just as a
general presence, but as her Head till the end of the ages when he will come
again in glory. The disciple who met and heard our Lord when he walked the earth
was called by him to express his faith by full obedience to his word. So too the
disciple of any age is called to express his faith in the living risen Jesus by
religious assent and obedience to the word of his body the Church. The obedience
of faith due to the person and word of the living Jesus is, ever since his
resurrection and ascension, now expressed in obedience to the word of
the Church when she utters in his name. The danger is that just as the
prospective disciples of today’s Gospel allowed something of their own private
judgment to interfere with an obedience of faith, so too the same danger remains
from generation to generation in man’s response to Jesus who speaks as the
living head of his Church. A special propensity of our age is to think that we
and not Christ know what is true and right. In concrete terms this means that we
are prone to refuse to accept with the obedience of faith the word of the Church
speaking in his name. We are peculiarly inclined to prefer our own private
judgment for this word in deciding what is right and true. If we go with this
tendency the true spirit of Christianity and of Catholicism will be corrupted in
our life. Our faith in Christ will be corrupted by the virus of a misplaced
private judgment which we follow in place of the authoritative word of the
Church, which the truly Catholic mind knows is the word of the living Jesus.
This is an especially
important matter for the lay faithful whose irreplaceable mission is to
bring the word of Christ to the public square, to the family home, to
the workbench, to politics and the legislature and to every corner of
our very secular world. If a Catholic out there in the world chooses to
substitute his private judgment as to what is right and wrong for the
word of Christ as it comes in the word of the Church, he betrays the
loss of a Catholic mind. A virus has penetrated his living of the
Catholic faith and has corrupted its true spirit. That virus is the
preference for one’s own private judgment over obedience to the
authoritative word of the Church. This obedience is the only authentic
expression of faith in Jesus. Let us resolve to be like Mary our Mother
who after Christ was the perfect embodiment of the entire biblical
witness to the obedience of faith given to God revealing himself and
his word. Throughout her life she rendered in a perfect way the
obedience of faith, expressing it simply and perfectly at the
annunciation when she replied to the angel by saying, “Let it be done
unto me according to your word.”
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.144-149 (Obedience of faith)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Follow me” (Luke 9:51-62)
St Teresa Benedicta of
the
Cross [Edith Stein] (1891-1942), Carmelite, Martyr, Co-Patroness
of Europe (Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross)
The Saviour preceded us on the path
of
poverty. All the possessions of heaven and earth belonged to him. They
presented for him no danger; he could make use of them while keeping
his heart completely free. But he knew that it is almost impossible for
a human being to have possessions without subjecting ourselves to them
and becoming a slave. That is why he gave up everything and so showed
us by his example even more than by his words that only the one who
possesses nothing possesses everything. His birth in a stable and his
flight to Egypt already showed that the Son of the Man had nowhere to
rest his head. Whoever wants to follow him must know that we have here
below no permanent dwelling. The more deeply we become aware of it, the
more ardently we shall aim towards our future dwelling, and we shall
exult in the thought that we will find our home in heaven.
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Engrave in your memory those words which struck you while praying,
and repeat them slowly many times throughout the day.
(The Way,
no.103)
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What place does the family occupy in
society?
The family is the original cell of human society and is,
therefore,
prior to any recognition by public authority. Family values and
principles constitute the foundation of social life. Family life is an
initiation into the life of society. (2207-2208)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.457)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Sunday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Within your Temple
we ponder your loving kindness, O God.
As your name, so also your praise reaches to the end of the
earth;
your right hand is filled with justice. (Psalm 47:10-11)
Father, through the
obedience of Jesus your servant and your Son,
you raised a fallen
world. Free us from sin and bring us the joy that lasts forever.
We ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(July 8) St.
Gregory Grassi and Companions (d. 1900) Christian
missionaries have often gotten caught in the crossfire of wars against
their own countries. When the governments of Britain, Germany, Russia
and France forced substantial territorial concessions from the Chinese
in 1898, anti-foreign sentiment grew very strong among many Chinese
people. Gregory Grassi was born in Italy in 1833, ordained in 1856 and
sent to China five years later. Gregory was later ordained Bishop of
North Shanxi. With 14 other European missionaries and 14 Chinese
religious, he was martyred during the short but bloody Boxer Uprising
of 1900. Twenty-six of these martyrs were arrested on the orders of Yu
Hsien, the governor of Shanxi province. They were hacked to death on
July 9, 1900. Five of them were Friars Minor; seven were Franciscan
Missionaries of Mary — the first martyrs of their congregation. Seven
were Chinese seminarians and Secular Franciscans; four martyrs were
Chinese laymen and Secular Franciscans. The other three Chinese laymen
killed in Shanxi simply worked for the Franciscans and were rounded up
with all the others. Three Italian Franciscans were martyred that same
week in the province of Hunan. All these martyrs were beatified in
1946. (Saints))
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Isaiah
66:10-14c; Psalm 66:1-7, 16, 20; Galatians 6:14-18;
Luke 10:1-12, 17-20
At that time the
Lord appointed seventy-two others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to
every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, “The
harvest is abundant but the labourers are few; so ask the master of the
harvest to send out labourers for his harvest. Go on your way; behold,
I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money bag, no sack,
no sandals; and greet no one along the way. Into whatever house you
enter, first say, ‘Peace to this household.’ If a peaceful person lives
there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for
the labourer deserves his payment. Do not move about from one house to
another. Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set
before you, cure the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God is
at hand for you.’ Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you,
go out into the streets and say, ‘The dust of your town that clings to
our feet, even that we shake off against you.’ Yet know this: the
kingdom of God is at hand. I tell you, it will be more tolerable for
Sodom on that day than for that town.” The seventy-two returned
rejoicing, and said, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because
of your name.” Jesus said, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning
from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power to ‘tread upon
serpents’ and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and
nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits
are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in
heaven.” (Luke 10:1-12,
17-20)
In
our Gospel passage today our Lord sends seventy two of his disciples out to
announce the imminent arrival of a kingdom (Luke 10:1-12,
17-20).
It is the kingdom of God. All through history there have been kingdoms
after kingdoms, and in our Lord’s day the greatest of them was the
empire of Rome. Large numbers of the chosen people of Israel assumed
that the kingdom which the prophets had predicted and which would have
the Messiah as its king would be of the same kind, only greater and
everlasting. Many thought that the kingdom of God would be a great
political kingdom not unlike that of King David many centuries before,
only far greater.
God would reign in and through the Messiah,
God’s anointed one. Such would be the Kingdom of God. But as our Lord
stated in the presence of Pontius Pilate, his kingdom was not at all
like the kingdoms of this world. As he had said during his public
ministry, the kingdom of God is within you. By his death and
resurrection and by means of his Church, God in Christ would be present
and glorified among men as King of kings and Lord of lords. But now,
let this thought arising from today’s Gospel remind us of what is the
ultimate end and purpose of all things. The fact is that very many
people rarely ask themselves what is the ultimate purpose of
everything. They pragmatically set for themselves their own purposes,
and live and work accordingly. If you were to walk through a busy
street of Sydney and stop this or that person to ask him what is the
purpose of the world and of all things, I think you would see a very
puzzled look on his face. Many might admit to never having thought of
the matter. Some might say, on reflection, that the purpose of the
world and of all things is to provide for the needs of man. For this
reason, they might go on, we must care for our planet and our universe
and not allow it to be ruined by man-made climate changes. Others might
say that the world does not have an objective end or purpose at all,
and that it is just there. We find ourselves living in it and we just
make use of it for our own happiness just as the creatures of the wild
make use of their environments. If you were to ask them what is the
purpose of their own life, they might have some answer but it would be
a tentative one, and it would be even more tentative if the question
were about the purpose and end of the world and of all things.
But
in fact we know what the ultimate purpose and end of all things is, the
purpose of the world and of the life of each one of us. That purpose is
the honour and the glory of God. It is a profound and simple answer to
a perplexing question and it contains an ocean of meaning which if
taken to heart will transform a person’s life. It has been revealed to
us and it casts light on everything. God created the world and all that
is in it in order to show forth his goodness, truth and beauty. The
ultimate end of all creation is that God will be all in all, and in
this lies man’s true happiness. We were made to find our happiness in
God being honoured and glorified. So our life ought be lived and the
world ought be used in such a way that God is glorified, and he will be
glorified if his will is done. Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we
pray that God’s Kingdom will come and that his will be done on earth as
it is done in heaven. We have come from God and he freely sustains all
things constantly. He gives us the capacity to act and he leads us and
all things towards fulfilment. That fulfilment will come in God being
glorified, and he will be glorified if we live in union with the person
of Jesus. All things and each of us as well, are recapitulated, as St
Paul puts it, in Christ. We are connected with him, by our baptism we
live in him, and our true fulfilment is to be found in living and dying
in union with him. We and all things are sustained to give glory to
God. But sin ruins this plan. Christ our redeemer lived, died and rose
to give glory to his heavenly Father, and he redeemed mankind so that
his Father would be glorified and honoured the more. The purpose of the
Church Christ founded and sustains is in order that in him we might all
be able to live in such a way that God the most holy Trinity is
glorified.
No matter what might be
our vocation or profession in life, the end or purpose of life and of
all things is that God be honoured and glorified. That is our daily
mission. How seldom it is that journalists, politicians, legal people,
those in industry and commerce, families or trades, understand that
this is the meaning of things. It is this which gives direction to life
and it is the decisive factor in the daily choices that have to be
made. St Ignatius Loyola formulated a famous motto. It is, All for the
greater glory of God. Let us make our favourite prayer the one we pray
during the Rosary, Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the
Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be for
ever.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no. 293-301
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Charity: soul of the mission"
Pope Benedict XVI
(Message for the World Mission Day 2006)
Unless the mission is oriented by charity, that is, unless it springs
from a profound act of divine love, it risks being reduced to mere
philanthropic and social activity. In fact, God's love for every person
constitutes the heart of the experience and proclamation of the Gospel,
and those who welcome it in turn become its witnesses. God's love,
which gives life to the world, is the love that was given to us in
Jesus, the Word of salvation, perfect icon of the Heavenly Father's
mercy.
The saving message can be summed up
well, therefore, in the words of John the Evangelist: "In this
the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son
into the world, so that we might live through him" (I Jn 4: 9). It was
after his Resurrection that Jesus gave the Apostles the mandate to
proclaim the news of this love, and the Apostles, inwardly transformed
by the power of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, began to bear
witness to the Lord who had died and was risen. Ever since, the Church
has continued this same mission, which is an indispensable and ongoing
commitment for all believers.
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have told me sometimes that you are like a clock out of order,
which strikes at the wrong moment: you feel cold, dry and arid at the
time of your prayer, and on the other hand, when it is least to be
expected, in the street, in the midst of your daily activities, in the
bustle and hubbub of the city, or in the concentrated calm of your
professional work, you find yourself praying... At the wrong moment?
Possibly; but don't waste those chimes of your clock. The Spirit
breathes where he will.
(The Way,
no.110)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What are the duties of citizens in regard
to civil authorities?
Those subject to authority should regard those in authority as
representatives of God and offer their loyal collaboration for the
right functioning of public and social life. This collaboration
includes love and service of one's homeland, the right and duty to
vote, payment of taxes, the defence of one's country, and the right to
exercise constructive criticism. (CCC 2238-2241, 2255)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.464)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
In my justice I
shall see your face, O Lord;
when your glory appears my joy will be full. (Psalm 16:15)
God our Father, your
light of truth guides us to the way of Christ.
May all who follow him reject what is contrary to the Gospel.
We ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(July
15) Saint
Bonaventure, bishop and doctor of the Church.
Little is known of the childhood of this successor
of St. Francis of Assisi. Saint Bonaventure was born near Viterbo
between 1218 and 1221. His took the habit of the Friars Minor, and
studied under the "Unanswerable" Doctor, Alexander of Hales. He himself
is known as the "Seraphic" Doctor, teaching theology and Holy Scripture
from 1248 to 1257. St. Bonaventure was called by his priestly
obligations to preach, and this he did with much vigour, engendering
fire in those who listened to him. While he was at the University of
Paris, he wrote the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard,
covering the field of Scholastic Theology. This time in Paris was
difficult though, as there was great jealousy against the medicant
friars for many reasons including academic success and the ease with
which they reproved the worldliness around them. Battling books were
issued between the groups, with William of St. Amour leading the
secular clergy, and St. Bonaventure defending the poverty of life of
the Friars. Finally, Pope Alexander IV sent cardinals to settle the
manner, and the books of William of St. Amour were burned, the Friars
reinstated, and the attack suspended. In the following year, St.
Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas received their Doctorates of
Theology together. Whereas Thomas' work centres on the
intellect, St. Bonaventure's texts are of a more spiritual nature,
including Concerning
the Perfection of Life, Soliloquy and Concerning
the Threefold Way. He forms the basis of the Franciscan school
of
thought. This same year of his Doctorate, 1257, St. Bonaventure was
elected minister general of the Franciscans. He immediately set upon a
standardization of the Order, since it had fractured into sections
ranging from permissive and lax to excessively rigorist. In setting the
Order straight, he formed a Constitution following a middle to
conservative path. This reformed and disciplined the lax, while
tempering the excesses of the rigorists. In many ways he acted almost
as if he were Francis, and is still considered the Second Founder of
the Order. The saint refused the first promotion to the Episcopate, but
was induced into the Cardinalate of Albano in 1273. Gregory X
instructed the Saint to prepare the General Council of Lyons, and
during the proceedings St. Bonaventure proved most crucial in reuniting
the Greeks Catholics with Rome. He also attending the last General
Chapter of the Order during the breaks in the Council. There Saint
Bonaventure preached at the Reunion Mass after the council, and then
died suddenly in the night of July 14-15, 1274.
(Saints)
As a theologian Pope Benedict XVI
considers himself in the line of Augustine and Bonaventure.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Deuteronomy
30:10-14; Psalm 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37 or Psalm 19:8 — 11;
Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37
There was a scholar of
the law who stood up to test him and said, “Teacher, what must I do to
inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law?
How do you read it?” He said in reply, You shall love the Lord, your
God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength,
and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.” He replied to
him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” But
because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my
neighbour?” Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went
down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off
leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road,
but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a
Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the
opposite side. But a Samaritan traveller who came upon him was moved
with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and
wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his
own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him. The next day he took
out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the
instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have
given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’ Which of these three, in
your opinion, was neighbour to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The
one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do
likewise.” (Luke 10:25-37)
The story
of the Good
Samaritan is one of the most famous stories of world literature and has
inspired countless Christians to a life of service to those in need.
For instance, in Australia there is one Institute of women religious
founded in the nineteenth century that takes the Good Samaritan for its
name. Our Lord told the story in explanation of the Old Testament
divine command to love. In order to gain eternal life we must love God
with all our heart and our neighbour as ourself. Christ subsequently
added a new element to this command, that we are to love one another as
he loves us. Love for one’s neighbour is a central requirement for
salvation.
In our Lord’s description of the Last
Judgment as narrated in the Gospel of St Matthew (chapter 25), our
judgment hinges on how we have treated our neighbour, particularly the
one in need. Christ our Judge will regard what we do to the least in
need as having been done to himself. In our Gospel today
(Luke 10:25-37), the question directed
to our Lord is, who is my neighbour? In effect the question is, exactly
who am I to love as myself? Is it the one with whom I have God-given
natural ties and for whom I have natural responsibilities? Our
Lord’s answer is, I am to love as myself all who are in need and whom I
am able to help. In the story the priest and the Levite pass by the
wounded man in need. They are able to help him but they do not. They
are breaking God’s fundamental law of love the observance of which is
necessary for salvation. A foreigner and one who is not of their
religion comes by and sees the man in need and serves him at personal
cost and inconvenience. Our Lord holds up the example of that
compassionate Samaritan and says, go and do the same yourself. The
question we can go on to ask is, in just what circumstances is the
average person to do this?
Many interpret our
Lord’s teaching in this story as applying to special initiatives we can
take for those in need, initiatives that are over and above the
ordinary duties of everyday life. For instance, the St Vincent de Paul
members walk in the footsteps of the Good Samaritan, visiting persons
in material need in their own free time and assisting those who are not
otherwise helped by the various institutions of society. Again, parish
catechists involve themselves in very important spiritual works of
mercy, visiting the state schools in their own free time teaching
children who lack the critically important knowledge of the Catholic
Faith. They are Good Samaritans assisting every week considerable
numbers of young people in spiritual need. Many other examples of
spiritual and corporal works of mercy to those in need could be
mentioned that every parish invites all parishioners to consider giving
of their time to engage in. However, our Lord’s teaching does not
apply only to this kind of loving service to those in need. He is
speaking of the love for others that ought permeate our entire life in
whatever circumstance we find ourselves and whatever might be our
calling or profession. It must be remembered that the characteristic
situation of the lay faithful is in the world. He lives in the world of
family and work and daily acquaintances and his life is largely one of
service in that context. His life is inextricably bound up with the
world and by means of this involvement in the world the Church herself
is made present there. It is largely through the lay person that the
Church brings Christ into the world. The Church is present in society,
in family life, in the myriad forms of daily work, in commerce and in
political and legislative action precisely through and in the lay
faithful.
This means that the lay person in the world
must live and act as an instrument of Christ and his Church right there in his
daily situation in the world. It means that precisely there he must
constantly be the Good Samaritan whom our Lord says we must imitate. In his
family life the lay member of Christ’s Church must be the Good Samaritan serving
the one in spiritual or material need. In his daily profession and work he must
be the Good Samaritan serving those in need as would Christ. Imagine Christ and
his foster-father Joseph at their daily work and profession in Nazareth all
those years. They embodied to a perfect degree the spirit of the Good Samaritan
in everyday life. It means taking to heart the needs of the common good in
society and doing all possible to ensure that civil and political life and all
legislation serve those in need. In God’s plan society itself and all its laws
and institutions ought be imbued with the spirit of the Good Samaritan. Christ
would say to every country and culture and institution, go and do what the Good
Samaritan
did. The mission of the lay faithful in Christ’s Catholic
Church is so to live and work in family and society that the spirit of
the Good Samaritan, which is nothing other than the spirit of Christ
himself who became poor that we might be rich, pervades all of life be
it personal, social, economic, legal, political, national and
international. Christ, having told the parable of the Good Samaritan,
says to each of us and to the entire world, Go and do the same
yourself. If we and the world neglect to do this, God will judge us and
the world accordingly.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1913-1916
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You write. 'In my spiritual reading I build up a store of fuel. —
It looks like a lifeless heap, but I often find that my memory, of its
own accord, will draw from it material which fills my prayer with life
and inflames my thanksgiving after Communion.'
(The Way,
no.117)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What medical procedures are
permitted when death is considered imminent?
When death is considered imminent the ordinary care owed to a sick
person cannot be legitimately interrupted. However, it is legitimate to
use pain-killers which do not aim at in death and to refuse
“over-zealous treatment”, that is the utilization of disproportionate
medical procedures without reasonable hope of a positive outcome.
(2278-2279)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.471)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
God himself is my
help. The Lord upholds my life.
I will offer you a
willing sacrifice;
I will praise your name, O Lord, for
its goodness. (Ps 53.6.8)
Lord be merciful to your
people. Fill us with your gifts.
and
make us always eager to serve you in faith, hope and love.
We ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(July 22) St.
Mary Magdalene Except for the mother of Jesus, few women
are more honoured in the Bible than Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene is
mentioned in the Gospels as being among the women of Galilee who
followed Jesus and His disciples, and who was present at His
Crucifixion and Burial, and who went to the tomb on Easter Sunday to
anoint His body. She was the first to see the Risen Lord, and to
announce His Resurrection to the apostles. Accordingly, she is referred
to in early Christian writings as "the apostle to the apostles."
Mary Magdalene, Mary of
Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus), and the unnamed penitent woman
who anointed Jesus's feet (Luke 7:36-48) are sometimes supposed to be
the same woman. From this, plus the statement that Jesus had cast seven
demons out of her (Luke 8:2), has risen the tradition that she had been
a great sinner before she met Jesus. Yet most Scripture scholars today
point out that there is no scriptural basis for confusing the two
women. Mary Magdalene, that is, “of Magdala,” was the one from whom
Christ cast out “seven demons” (Luke 8:2)—an indication, at the worst,
of extreme demonic possession or, possibly, severe illness. Father W.J.
Harrington, O.P., writing in the New Catholic Commentary,
says that “seven demons” “does not mean that Mary had lived an immoral
life—a conclusion reached only by means of a mistaken identification
with the anonymous woman of Luke 7:36.” Father Edward Mally, S.J.,
writing in the Jerome
Biblical Commentary, agrees that she “is not...the same as the
sinner of Luke 7:37, despite the later Western romantic tradition about
her.”
Mary Magdalene was one of the many “who were assisting them [Jesus and
the Twelve] out of their means.” She was one of those who stood by the
cross of Jesus with his mother. And, of all the “official” witnesses
that might have been chosen for the first awareness of the
Resurrection, she was the one to whom that privilege was given. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Genesis
18:1-10a; Psalm 15:2-5; Colossians 1:24-28;
Luke 10:38-42
Jesus entered a
village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a
sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him
speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord,
do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.” The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha,
you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only
one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken
from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)
We have just heard a
very beautiful scene in the Gospel offering much food for prayerful
reflection. We know from the Gospels that Martha and Mary of our
scene today had Lazarus for their brother, the one our Lord raised from
the dead after his having been in the grave four days. We are told in
the Gospel that our Lord loved Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Just as in the
Gospel of St John there is repeated reference to the “beloved disciple”
— a reference to John himself — so there is mention of the fact that our Lord had a
special friendship with Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Let us note that
there is no explicit mention of any of these three actually
accompanying our Lord on his journeys throughout Galilee and Judea.
Seventy-two disciples are mentioned as being sent out by our
Lord to go
ahead of him to preach and prepare for his coming. The Twelve are
described as being called to be with our Lord and to be sent out to
preach and to do much of what he himself was doing. Certain women too
are presented as accompanying our Lord and the Twelve to assist them in
various ways and to support them from their means, fulfilling something
of the role of later assistants and housekeepers for the intensely busy
travelling band. But there is no mention of Lazarus, Martha and Mary
among them. It looks as if for various reasons they stayed at their
home in Bethany fulfilling their own commitments. But they were ardent
disciples and overflowing friends of the Master. They loved him and
they gave their total assent to his teaching, placing all their hopes
in him. Undoubtedly they bore constant witness to Jesus among their
friends, relatives and acquaintances in their everyday life and work in
and around Bethany. The Gospel tells us that Jesus loved them and it is
clear that he called on them when he was in the area of Jerusalem and
perhaps stayed with them. We could liken their vocation to that of the
typical lay member of Christ’s faithful with his family and work in the
world, and their wonderful friendship with our Lord reminds us that all
are called to a deep friendship with Jesus whatever be their vocation
in life and whatever be the circumstances in which their calling is
lived out.
Our
scene today not only reminds us of the friendship with Jesus to which
all are called, but it tells us of a most important element of this
friendship. Friendship with Jesus requires being like Mary sitting at
the feet of Jesus listening to him speaking. Christian prayer involves
an abiding openness to the word of God as uttered by Jesus. St Luke
holds up before the ordinary Christian, the Christian of ordinary
everyday circumstances in home, family and small duties, the example of
Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him speaking (Luke 10:38-42). St Luke is not meaning
to
assert that what Mary was doing at this particular moment is to be done
at all times. Rather he is holding before us this snapshot and saying
to every member of Christ’s faithful that however busy like Martha you
are you must put time into doing
what Mary was doing at this instant. You must spend time into being
with Jesus in prayer, listening to his word as it comes to you in the
Scriptures and in the life and the Tradition of the Church. In this
snapshot of the Gospel scene Martha complains to our Lord that Mary is
not getting on with pressing duties, and our Lord tells her,
undoubtedly with a smile, that what Mary is doing is of the greatest
importance and most pleasing to him. At this particular moment Martha
was anxious and worried about too many things and excessively so,
perhaps even to have briefly forgotten the Lord. That is pure
speculation, and in any case every year the Church celebrates the feast
day of St Martha, whereas there is no explicit feast day for Mary or
for Lazarus though undoubtedly they are saints in heaven. The point,
though, of our brief Gospel scene is that prayer at the feet of the
Master must be the most important and indispensable component of our
life in Christ, and if our prayer life is weak then our relationship
with Christ
will be weak. Everyday we ought put time into doing what Mary in our
scene is doing, and we must persevere in our life of prayer despite
distractions and difficulties. With this daily meeting with Jesus
sitting at his feet in prayer gazing on him in faith and listening to
his word, we are able to bring to our many duties of service in
everyday life a growing love of the Master, enabling us to serve him
with love and bear daily witness to him in our service of others in
family, work and everywhere our calling in life might place us.
Let us resolve to be
Christ’s very close friends. That is the vocation of all who are
baptized. If we are to be his friends, a strong, daily and persevering
life of prayer is indispensable. Prayer is a loving conversation with
the one whom we know loves us, a conversation which is characterized
above
all by an attitude of gazing on Jesus and listening as he speaks his
word to us. That word comes to us in the Scriptures and in the entire
Tradition of the Church. By means of his word we grow in the knowledge
and the love of him and we are able to live in a way that pleases him.
Our daily witness to him becomes possible and effective only if we live
a life of persevering daily prayer despite all difficulties. In this
way we shall be able to pray always, while serving God fruitfully in
our daily work and responsibilities.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no. 2725-2728
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You, a doctor, an apostle, write to me: 'We
all know by experience that we can be chaste, living vigilantly,
frequenting the sacraments and stamping out the first sparks of passion
before the fire can spread. And it so happens that among the chaste are
found the finest men in every way. And among the lustful predominate
the timid, the selfish, the treacherous and the cruel — characters of
little manliness.'
(The Way,
no.124)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What care must be given to the dying?
The dying have a right to live the last moments of their earthly lives
with dignity and, above all, to be sustained with prayer and the
sacraments that prepare them to meet the living God. (CCC 2299)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.478)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
God is in his holy
dwelling; he will give a home to the lonely,
he gives power and
strength to his people. (Ps 67:6-7.36)
God our father and
protector, without you nothing is holy nothing has value.
Guide us
to everlasting life by helping us to use wisely the blessings you have
given to the world.
We ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(July 29)
St.
Peter and St. Marcellinus Though we know very little about
these two martyrs under Diocletian, there is no question that the early
church venerated them. Evidence of the respect in which they were held
are the basilica Constantine built over their tombs and the presence of
their names in the first Eucharistic prayer. Pope St. Damasus says that
he heard the story of these two martyrs from their executioner who
became a Christian after their deaths. Marcellinus, a priest, and
Peter, an exorcist, died in the year 304. According to a legendary
account of their martyrdom, the two Romans saw their imprisonment as
just one more opportunity to evangelize and managed to convert their
jailer and his family. The legend also says that they were beheaded in
the forest so that other Christians wouldn't have a chance to bury and
venerate their bodies. Two women found the bodies, however, and had
them properly buried.
(Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: Genesis
18:20-32; Psalm 138:1-3, 6-8; Colossians
2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13
Jesus was praying
in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said
to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” He
said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your
kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us
to the final test.” And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a
friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three
loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a
journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from
within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my
children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you
anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the
loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever
he needs because of his persistence. “And I tell you, ask and you will
receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to
you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and
to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you
would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a
scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how
to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in
heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:1-13)
Anyone with a
modicum of historical knowledge will know that religion is fundamental
to human history and very much part of the cultures of man. The glaring
exception — we could call it an anomaly — is the secular Western
culture of the last few centuries since the Reformation and the
Enlightenment, together with those cultures and philosophies that have
been influenced by the secularisation of Western culture. If religion
has been part of human cultures, so has prayer because prayer is at the
heart of religion. When we look at the life of prayer of mankind be it
public or private we see an enormous variation. The question naturally
arises then, how should we pray? We cannot simply look to
the testimony and practices of the various peoples because their
testimony differs so profoundly. Rather, in the first instance we must
look to what God has revealed about prayer, and this flows from what he
has revealed about himself because in prayer it is to him that man
addresses himself. What God has revealed about himself and about prayer
is given to us in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, and is
interpreted and taught by the Church especially in her catechisms. Now,
is there any way of getting at the essence of what God has revealed to
us about true prayer, prayer that is pleasing to him and therefore
fruitful? Yes there is, and we do this by turning to the teaching of
our Lord himself. What he teaches about prayer sums up the teaching of
the Old Testament on prayer and fulfils it with his own revelation.
Jesus Christ is our teacher in all things involving God and most
especially in the art and the practice of prayer. It needs to be
stressed in our day that the Christian looks to him for his life of
prayer and not primarily to sources other than Christ.
Our
Gospel passage today (Luke 11:1-13) is a most important
expression of our Lord’s teaching on prayer. As ever, it is simple,
concrete and illustrated by parables and parallels from everyday life.
Firstly, it gives us our Lord’s own prayer, the prayer he taught his
disciples when they asked him to teach them how to pray. It is the
Lord’s Prayer and being this it ought be a fundamental prayer for our
whole life. We ought pray it slowly and fervently every day, and
whenever it is prayed or sung at Mass it ought never be said or sung
just routinely. If we pray it well always during life, at the hour of
our death we shall be able to pray it with deep fervour. I remember
reading after Pope Paul VI died in 1978 that as he was dying he prayed
the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. His cause for canonization is progressing.
Imagine going from this life and into the presence of God with the
Lord’s Prayer having filled our mind, heart and soul! It has been said
that during the last moments of our life we draw on those simple things
that have proved to be our nourishment and stay through the years. I
invite you to make the Lord’s Prayer of our Gospel today just that, a
principal prayer of your daily life and the life of your family. I
recommend that you pray it with fervour often during each day and as a
family, allowing its words to shape your spiritual life and the life of
your family. It will shape our life with the thought that God is the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and because we are in him by faith and
baptism, God is our loving Father too. In union with Jesus we and every
family address him as our Father. Because he is our Father we can
address our petitions confidently to him — and our Lord tells us in the
prayer he has taught us what those petitions ought be. We ought make
those petitions our own and shape our lives according to them. Let us
not take this prayer for granted simply because we know it so well. It
contains in summary all God’s revelation on prayer and that is why the
Church in her catechisms usually presents her teaching on prayer as a
commentary on the Lord’s Prayer.
In our passage our Lord,
having taught his Prayer to the disciples then goes on to comment on
it, and the comment he makes stresses the great confidence we ought
have in presenting our petitions to God our Father. Our confidence
ought be a share in the confidence of Jesus himself in praying to his
heavenly Father. Our Lord tells us that if we ask we shall receive,
most especially shall we receive the greatest of the Father’s gifts,
the gift of the Holy Spirit. In his Letter St James is so confident of
prayer that he writes that if we do not receive what we have asked for
it is because we have not asked for it in the way we should. How should
we address our petitions to our heavenly Father, then? We do it in the
way, and with the attitude and with the mind of Christ. We ought try to
do everything, including our prayer, in Christ and as he would do it.
When we pray we ought unite ourselves with our Lord and in his presence
ask ourselves if he would be pleased to unite our petitions with his.
Is my petition to God pleasing to him and does it bring glory to our
heavenly Father? Is my petition one that I am convinced Christ would be
pleased to make his own? If so, then present that petition
perseveringly to God our Father knowing that he will answer it in the
way he knows is best for me and for his glory. Let every person and
every family take to heart our Lord’s teaching on prayer in today’s
Gospel, for prayer ought be the basis of the life of every person and
every family.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2598-2619, 2734-2741
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never speak
of impure things or events, not even to lament them. Remember that such
matter is stickier than pitch. Change the subject or, if that is not
possible, continue with it, speaking of the need and the beauty of
purity — a virtue of men who know the value of their souls.
(The Way, no.131)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In case of war, what does the moral
law require?
Even during a war the moral law always remains valid. It requires the
humane treatment of non-combatants, wounded soldiers and prisoners of
war. Deliberate actions contrary to the law of nations, and the orders
that command such actions are crimes, which blind obedience does not
excuse. Acts of mass destruction must be condemned and likewise the
extermination of peoples or ethnic minorities, which are most grievous
sins. One is morally bound to resist the orders that command such acts.
(CCC 2312-2314, 2328)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.485)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
God, come to my
help. Lord, quickly give me assistance.
You are the one who helps me and sets me
free: Lord, do not be long in coming. (Ps 69:2.6)
Father of everlasting
goodness, our origin and guide, be close to us and hear the
prayers of all who praise you.
Forgive
our sins and restore us to life. Keep us safe in your love.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(August
5) Dedication
of St. Mary Major
Basilica (St.
Mary of the Snows)
First raised at the order of Pope Liberius in the mid-fourth century,
the Liberian Basilica was rebuilt by Pope Sixtus III shortly after the
Council of Ephesus affirmed Mary’s title as Mother of God in 431.
Rededicated at that time to the Mother of God, St. Mary Major is the
largest church in the world honouring God through Mary. Standing atop
one of Rome’s seven hills, the Esquiline, it has survived many
restorations without losing its character as an early Roman basilica.
Its interior retains three naves divided by colonnades in the style of
Constantine’s era. Fifth-century mosaics on its walls testify to its
antiquity. St. Mary Major is one of the four Roman basilicas known as
patriarchal cathedrals in memory of the first centres of the Church.
St. John Lateran represents Rome, the See of Peter; St. Paul Outside
the Walls, the See of Alexandria, allegedly the see presided over by
Mark; St. Peter’s, the See of Constantinople; and St. Mary’s, the See
of Antioch, where Mary is supposed to have spent most of her life.
One legend, unreported before the year 1000, gives
another name to this feast: Our Lady of the Snows. According to that
story, a wealthy Roman couple pledged their fortune to the Mother of
God. In affirmation, she produced a miraculous summer snowfall and told
them to build a church on the site. The legend was long celebrated by
releasing a shower of white rose petals from the basilica’s dome every
August 5.
Theological debate over
Christ’s nature as God and man reached fever pitch in Constantinople in
the early fifth century. A chaplain to Bishop Nestorius began preaching
against the title Theotokos, “Mother of God,” insisting that the Virgin
was mother only of the human Jesus. Nestorius agreed, decreeing that
Mary would henceforth be named “Mother of Christ” in his see. The
people of Constantinople virtually revolted against their bishop’s
refutation of a cherished belief. When the Council of Ephesus refuted
Nestorius, believers took to the streets, enthusiastically chanting,
“Theotokos! Theotokos!”
“From the earliest times the Blessed Virgin is honored under the title
of Mother of God, in whose protection the faithful take refuge together
in prayer in all their perils and needs. Accordingly, following the
Council of Ephesus, there was a remarkable growth in the cult of the
People of God towards Mary, in veneration and love, in invocation and
imitation...” (Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church, 66).
(Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Ecclesiastes
1:2; 2:21-23; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-14, 17; Colossians
3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21
Someone in the
crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance
with me.” He replied to him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge
and arbitrator?” Then he said to the crowd, “Take care to guard against
all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of
possessions.” Then he told them a parable. “There was a rich man whose
land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ And he said, ‘This is
what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.There
I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself,
“Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this
night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have
prepared, to whom will they belong?’ Thus will it be for all who store
up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”
(Luke
12:13-21)
In the daily
news of the modern world the economy features prominently. The possession and
use of the material goods of life is of profound importance to man, and his
happiness depends to a fair extent on the degree to which he meets his needs by
gaining and using these goods. We need food and clothing.
We
need material shelter. We need to be able in some form to store up what we have
for our future security and also in order to enjoy some leisure. All this means
that our happiness in life depends to a greater or lesser extent on our
possessing things or having them at hand for our use. However, while material
possessions can bring a certain happiness, as is obvious from what we see
around us their possession and use can cause strife and suffering. A
person can work so exclusively at gaining many possessions that he can
easily neglect other more important things. For instance, a person who
works night and day to gain a lot of money — perhaps for good purposes
too, such as to provide a quality education for his children — can
easily neglect putting in time to be with his family and time for his
relationship with God. His desire to gain things could in due course
seriously affect his relationships with many others, and nations have
gone to war because of their desire for material goods. It does not
take much ordinary human reasoning to appreciate that it is all too
possible to become over-attached to material things, in a word to
become quite avaricious to the neglect of a life of unselfish love.
About two and a half thousand years ago Buddha in India set out on a
quest to find the key to happiness. He decided that it consisted in
detachment from all desire for things and the attainment of what he
called Enlightenment. There is a certain truth in what he said, but it
did not go far enough. God wants us to be rich, but the question is,
rich in what sense? What does God really want us to have, and how does
the possession of material things fit into this?
In our Gospel passage
today a person in the crowd asks our Lord to adjudicate justly on his
behalf with his brother who would not share the inheritance. Our Lord
told him he had not come to perform that kind of service, but went on
to warn against avarice of any kind. If our life, our Lord explains, is
given over just to the acquisition of material goods, what will happen
to them when we die? Whose will they be then? Let us often ponder on
our Lord’s very simple story of the “rich man whose land produced a
bountiful harvest” (Luke
12:13-21).
The rich man of the parable thought of nothing else, wanted nothing
else, and prepared for nothing else. He forgot that he was mortal,
indeed that life was short and very precarious, and that following
death there is the judgment of God. In thinking of death and the
judgment of God we think of the climax of life and all we do during
life ought be done in light of it. This thought will teach us that few
things are needed, indeed only one and that is God and living in a way
that is pleasing to him. If that is all that matters ultimately then
that is all that matters here and now and every day of our life. It
means that in all our daily efforts to gain the material things we need
for ourselves and for our families what matters is God and doing all
this in a way that is pleasing to him. In other words we should strive
to be totally attached to God and his holy will, and committed to
gaining and using material things only to the extent and only in the
way that God wants. What matters is God, God in Christ our Lord, and
being pleasing to him. The truly important thing in life is succeeding
in the love of God, not succeeding in simply gaining plenty of money
and in the process losing God. If we are indeed successful in gaining
money, all the money that we gain ought be used for the love and
service of God, whatever that will mean in the context of our
particular calling.
This is an extremely
important lesson to be learned by every man or woman in the world. In
all our dealings with the world and all it offers, the important thing
is Christ our Lord and all that he offers. What he offers is friendship
with him. This is the one thing necessary and it is this which should
be at the heart of all the work we put in to gain the material
possessions we undoubtedly need. This lesson can be learnt in large
part by reflecting often on the precariousness and shortness of life to
be followed by the judgment of God. If our life is marked by a profound
attachment to Christ and a detachment from the other things we must
necessarily deal with in life, our death will be the supreme moment of
union with Jesus when we surrender all into his keeping. Our death will
be the final act of detachment from this world and total abandonment to
the will and the care of God. It will be the supreme act of union with
Jesus, a share in his supreme act of union with his Father in his
sacrifice at Calvary. Let us then resolve to make holy all our use of
this world’s goods so that this world’s goods will serve their true
purpose, which is our sanctification. Let us so deal with the things of
this world that we and the world are sanctified.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no 2534-2550, 1681-1683, 988-1014.
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What a wretched man am I! Who will rescue me from this body
doomed to death?' The cry is Saint Paul's. — Courage: he too had to
fight.
(The Way,
no.138)
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What are the principal sins against
chastity?
Grave sins against chastity differ according to their object: adultery,
masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution, rape, and
homosexual acts. These sins are expressions of the vice of lust. These
kinds of acts committed against the physical and moral integrity of
minors become even more grave. (CCC 2351-2359, 2396)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.492)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
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. (Ps 73:20.19.22.23)
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.
(August 12) St.
Euplius On August 12, 304 A.D., during the
persecution of Diocletian at Catania, in Sicily, a deacon named Euplius
was brought to the governor's hall and staunchly professed his faith.
With the Book of Gospels in his hand, he was called before the governor
Calvisian and commanded to read from it. The saint read the passage:
"Blest are they who suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs
is the Kingdom of Heaven." Euplius then read the passage: "If anyone
will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and
follow me." Questioned by the governor as to what this meant, the youth
replied: "It is the law of my Lord, which has been delivered to me."
Calvisian asked: "By whom?" Euplius replied: "By Jesus Christ, the Son
of the Living God." With that, the governor ordered that he be led away
to be tortured. At the height of his torment Euplius was asked if he
still persisted in Christianity. The saintly youth answered: "What I
said before, I say again: I am a Christian and I read the Sacred
Scriptures." The governor realized that he would never give up his
faith, and ordered him to be beheaded. St. Euplius died April 29, 304
A.D., praising God all the while. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: Wisdom
18:6-9; Psalm 33:1, 12,
18-22; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48
Jesus said to his
disciples: “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father
is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms.
Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an
inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth
destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
“Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await
their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he
comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds
vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have
them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come
in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house
had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his
house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do
not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Then Peter said, “Lord, is this
parable meant for us or for everyone?” And the Lord replied, “Who,
then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in
charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper
time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing
so. Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant in charge of
all his property. But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is
delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the menservants and the
maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant’s
master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will
punish the servant severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful.
That servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations
nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely; and the
servant who was ignorant of his master’s will but acted in a way
deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. Much will
be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be
demanded of the person entrusted with more.” (Luke
12:32-48)
Of decisive
importance for the way we live are our notions. If we have a notion of life that
sees a person’s existence as ending at death, then that notion will affect the
way we live. I have known elderly people who think that nothing awaits them
beyond death, no more than for a dog or any animal. Many people have few
religious notions, while others have religious notions that are decisive. A
person who has the notion that Mahomet is God’s greatest prophet will live a
life very different in many respects from one who is convinced that
Jesus
is the Messiah, the Son of God and that Mahomet is in fact not a prophet in the
Judaeo-Christian sense. Many of our notions can be hidden from our
view because we have not explicitly turned our attention to them, and
yet they are at work in our life without our realizing it. One such
notion
is our understanding of man. To take an obvious example, all of society
can be profoundly affected by the death of a group of people in
some accident while not at all affected by the death of a much larger
number of cattle. Why is this? It is because all understand man to be
an essentially different and superior being to the animal. As against
the animal man is seen as an end in himself with inherent and
inalienable rights. It is actually immensely important that all of
society think through its notion of the human person because if this is
not done false notions will supplant true ones. This is what is
happening in the passing of legislation that allows for experimental
research on embryonic stem cells, which is a form of abortion done for
the sake of research. At work here is our understanding of man.
There are notions of man that
are perfectly correct and indeed fundamental, but which in the way they are
entertained can be inadequate. One of the many fine results of Greek
philosophical thought was its notion of man as a rational animal. In this notion
the reason (with its accompanying power of choice) is identified as the
distinguishing element in man marking him off from other creatures which in
other respects are very like him. An enormous amount of important philosophical
thought has flowed from this definition of man. However, in a culture and an era
when rational thought is often dissociated from morality and religion, this
notion can be happily entertained in a way that does not support or open people
to ethics and religion. A person can take pride in his power of thought
and choice and as a result regard himself as eminent in his humanity, all the
while neglecting his moral and religious sense. Cardinal Newman preferred to
emphasize the conscience as the distinguishing feature of man. I would like to
suggest a slightly different notion provided it is understood as including man’s
rationality and conscience. If we consider the sweep of human history and
cultures, yes, we see obvious products of man’s power to reason and to choose,
just as we see obvious products of his sense of moral obligation. But
very noticeable is his sense of the divine however vague and ill formed
it may be. Religion distinguishes human cultures. Consider the
work of anthropologists of primal and indigenous societies. Consider
the work of archaeologists of past civilizations. Consider the work of
sociologists and historians of the various peoples across the centuries
and across the world. Religion is one of the most prominent subjects of
their researches. At least it is unavoidable. All this is to say that
man is shown in his life and works to be a religious being. If he is a
rational animal, he is also a religious animal. Religion distinguishes
the human being, even if, like his rationality and power of choice, his
religious life can be neglected and profoundly deformed.
All this is to say that
in creating man in his own image God has not
only given him the power to understand and to choose what is right, but
also to want to see and know him. By means of this innate desire for
God
that characterizes the heart and the mind of man God never ceases to
draw man to himself, and we see evidence of this in the cultures and
religions of man throughout history. We have been created to find only
in God the fullness of our happiness for which we long. This
intimate bond with God and our desire and right to know him gives to us
our fundamental dignity. This capacity to know God, and to live in and
for him marks us off from all other living things in the world. If it
is frustrated or unfulfilled, our life will be frustrated and
unfulfilled. It means that we ought every day be striving to be on the
look-out for God’s presence and his will, and using our innate power of
mind and choice above all to know, love and serve him in our everyday
life. When we nourish and keep alert our God-given religious sense we
are nourishing the deepest roots of our humanity. We nourish this sense
by contemplating the world and its dependence on God, and this
religious sense blossoms
in the consideration of God’s revelation to us especially in the
Jesus his Son our redeemer. In this way we remain open to the presence
and comings of Christ into our life. As our Lord says to us in today’s
Gospel, “be like servants who await their master’s return from a
wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.” He tells
us that we must “be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son
of Man will come.” (Luke
12,35-40) Let us fan into a very great and unquenchable flame the desire for God
he himself has planted within us. It will take us to him and to heaven.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.27-35
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The battle front. A group of some twenty
officers, singing together in
gay and noble comradeship. The songs come quickly, one after another.
That young lieutenant with the brown moustache only heard the first:
'I have no use for divided hearts: I give mine whole, and not in
parts.'
'What reluctance to give my whole heart!' And his prayer rose up in a
broad and peaceful flow.
(The Way,
no.145)
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Why are artificial insemination and
artificial fertilization immoral?
They are immoral because they dissociate procreation from the act with
which the spouses give themselves to each other and so introduce the
domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human
person. Furthermore, heterologous insemination and fertilization with
the use of techniques that involve a person other than the married
couple infringe upon the right of a child to be born of a father and
mother known to him, bound to each other by marriage and having the
exclusive right to become parents only through each another. (CCC
2373-2377)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.499)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
God, our protector,
keep us in mind; always give strength to your people.
For if we can be with you even one day, it is better than a
thousand years without you (Ps 83:10-11)
God our Father, may we
love you in all things and above all things
and reach one day the joy you have prepared for us beyond all
our imagining.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(August 19) St. John Eudes
(1601-1680) How little we know
where God’s grace will lead. Born on a farm in northern France, John
died at 79 in the next “county” or department. In that time he was a
religious, a parish 
missionary, founder of two religious
communities
and a great promoter of the devotion to the Sacred Heart and the
Immaculate Heart of Mary. He joined the religious community of the
Oratorians and was ordained a priest at 24. During severe
plagues in
1627 and 1631, he volunteered to care for the stricken in his own
diocese. Lest he infect his fellow religious, he lived in a huge cask
in the middle of a field during the plague. At age 32, John became a
parish missionary. His gifts as preacher and confessor won him great
popularity. He preached over 100 parish missions, some lasting from
several weeks to several months. In his concern with the spiritual
improvement of the clergy, he realized that the greatest need was for
seminaries. He had permission from his general superior, the bishop and
even Cardinal Richelieu to begin this work, but the succeeding general
superior disapproved. After prayer and counsel, John decided it was
best to leave the religious community. The same year he
founded a new
one, ultimately called the Eudists (Congregation of Jesus and Mary),
devoted to the formation of the clergy by conducting diocesan
seminaries. The new venture, while approved by individual bishops, met
with immediate opposition, especially from Jansenists and some of his
former associates. John founded several seminaries in Normandy, but was
unable to get approval from Rome (partly, it was said, because he did
not use the most tactful approach). In his parish mission work, John
was disturbed by the sad condition of prostitutes who
sought to escape
their miserable life. Temporary shelters were found but arrangements
were not satisfactory. A certain Madeleine Lamy, who had cared for
several of the women, one day said to him, “Where are you off to now?
To some church, I suppose, where you’ll gaze at the images and think
yourself pious. And all the time what is really wanted of you is a
decent house for these poor creatures.” The words, and the laughter of
those present, struck deeply within him. The result was another new
religious community, called the Sisters of Charity of the Refuge. He is
probably best known for the central theme of his writings: Jesus as the
source of holiness, Mary as the model of the Christian life. His
devotion to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary led
Pius XI to declare him the father of the liturgical cult of the Hearts
of Jesus and Mary.
Holiness is the wholehearted openness
to the love of God. It is visibly expressed in many ways, but the
variety of expression has one common quality: concern for the needs of
others. In John’s case, those who were in need were plague-stricken
people, ordinary parishioners, those preparing for the priesthood,
prostitutes and all Christians called to imitate the love of Jesus and
his mother. “Our wish, our object, our chief preoccupation must be to
form Jesus in ourselves, to make his spirit, his devotion, his
affections, his desires and his disposition live and reign there. All
our religious exercises should be directed to this end. It is the work
which God has given us to do unceasingly” (St. John Eudes, The Life and
Reign of Jesus in Christian Souls).
(Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Jeremiah
38:4-6, 8-10; Psalm 40:2-4,
18; Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53
Jesus said to his
disciples: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and
how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I
must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I
tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be
divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be
divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against
her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against
her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
(Luke
12:49-53)
One of the
most striking features of human history and society
is the constant recurrence of war. Inasmuch as man has a profound need
for society and for relationships with others one would have thought
that human history would have been distinguished by peace. Of course,
this indeed is how things ought to have been, but due to man’s original
fall it is not so. So obvious and notable is this fact that many
general histories have been written from the perspective of the ebb and
flow of wars. Peace is man’s need, but it is constantly elusive. I
remember when the Berlin wall fell and the communist countries of
Russia and Eastern Europe began to crumble, all hoped for a transformation of the
cold war into a new era of peace. But suddenly
out of nowhere began the era of Islamic terrorism and nothing seems
able to stop it from growing. Peace seems to be constantly escaping our
grasp.
There has
been a view of Jesus Christ which looks on him simply
as a man of peace. He was a peacemaker, and required of his
followers that they be makers of peace. This is perfectly correct if
properly understood. After all, our Lord solemnly tells his disciples
that “Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called sons of God”
(Matthew 5:9). Throughout Christian history there have been countless
examples of holy Christians who out of love for Christ have
distinguished themselves for their sowing of peace and replacing strife
with concord. But these holy builders of the peace of Christ did not
see themselves as keeping just any kind of peace in the sense of
avoiding all conflict. Nazism grew in Germany in the 1920s because many
persons were not vigilant, and others just wanted to avoid difficulty.
Thus Nazism was allowed to gain power. There is an old saying which
states that evil flourishes when good people do nothing. Doing little
in the face of evil and human need does not safeguard the peace that
God desires for the world. The peace Christ came to bring involves
conflict with what the Christian tradition has identified as the values
of the world, the flesh and the devil. It involves a courageous and
persevering struggle for the truth.
Our Lord proclaimed the obligation to build peace, but look at what
happened in his own life and ministry. One might say, if only he had said
nothing things would have been more peaceful! If only he had remained in
Nazareth and let things be! Instead he aroused great opposition from the
religious leaders and division of opinion about him among the people because of
his bearing witness to the truth above all about himself.
His claims and his doctrine led to his rejection and
death. Our Lord caused strife. Indeed, in our Gospel today our Lord,
having told his disciples in a much earlier chapter that they were to
be builders of peace, tells them that “I have come to set the earth on
fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” He asks “Do you think
that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but
rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three
against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his
son and a son against his father” (Luke 12:49-53). The division was
caused by his
proclamation of the truth. At the beginning of our Lord’s life when he
was presented in the Temple, the holy Simeon took the child Jesus into
his arms and solemnly foretold that he would be a sign of contradiction
and that many would rise and fall because of him. Furthermore, a sword
would pierce the soul of the Virgin Mary, the first and greatest
Christian. That is to say, being a true Christian and witnessing to
Christ and his truth in the world will not be easy. It will bring
contradiction and division.
In
his meeting with Pilate
our Lord defined his life’s mission as bearing witness to the truth.
Those who love the truth listen to his voice. There we have the key to
that true peace on earth which the mission of the Christian is to build
and promote. The key is Christ and his truth. The path to peace lies in
embracing and living in Jesus and in his truth, and in bearing witness
to it before others even if in doing so one becomes a sign of
contradiction. Of course, putting this great key into practice is a
complex daily challenge. But one at least must understand what that key
is. The key lies in knowing and putting into practice the truth
revealed by Jesus. The world needs Christ, and the lay person must
bring this message to the world of his everyday life. The Church in her
social and moral teaching spells out what this means in practical
detail, and it is incumbent on the lay person to try to gain an
adequate knowledge of this teaching so as to know what the truth of
Christ really entails for life and society. He must know the Church’s
teaching and must accept that it will involve the cross and
contradiction. How many Catholics who are in politics stand up for what
the Church firmly and clearly teaches as being the truth of Christ? A
very small minority. Let that sad fact be a great reminder for all
members of Christ faithful that the danger lies in doing nothing while
evil grows. The true peace God intends requires a great struggle and
will involve the cross and various forms of rejection. But the true
Christian is prepared to carry that cross in the footsteps of Jesus.
Let us then take to heart our Lord’s words in the Gospel, and be
prepared for what it takes to follow him wherever his providence places
us in life.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.2302-2317
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Don't you feel that greater peace and closer
union await you when you
respond to that extraordinary grace which demands your total detachment?
Struggle for him, to please him: but strengthen your hope.
(The Way,
no.152)
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What
does the seventh commandment require?
The seventh commandment requires respect for the goods of others
through the practice of justice and charity, temperance and solidarity.
In particular it requires respect for promises made and contracts
agreed to, reparation for injustice committed and restitution of stolen
goods, and respect for the integrity of creation by the prudent and
moderate use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the
universe with special attention to those species which are in danger of
extinction. (CCC 2407, 2450-2451)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.506)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Listen, Lord, and
answer me. Save your servant who trusts in you.
I call to you all day long, have mercy on me, O Lord (Ps 85:1-3)
Father, help us to seek
the values that will bring lasting joy in this changing world.
In our desire
for what you promise make us one in mind and heart.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(August 26)
St. Martha Martha, Mary and their brother Lazarus were
evidently close friends of Jesus (Saints).
He came to their home simply as a
welcomed guest, rather than as one celebrating the conversion of a
sinner like Zacchaeus or one unceremoniously received by a suspicious
Pharisee. The sisters feel free to call on Jesus at their brother’s
death, even though a return to Judea at that time seems almost certain
death. No doubt Martha was an active sort of person. On one occasion
(see Luke 10:38-42) she prepares the meal for Jesus and possibly his
fellow guests and forthrightly states the obvious: All hands should
pitch in to help with the dinner. Yet, as Father John McKenzie points
out, she need not be rated as an “unrecollected activist.” The
evangelist is emphasizing what our Lord said on several occasions about
the primacy of the spiritual: “...Do not worry about your life, what
you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear….But
seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:25b,
33a); “One does not live by bread alone” (Luke 4:4b); “Blessed are they
who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” (Matthew 5:6a). Martha’s
great glory is her simple and strong statement of faith in Jesus after
her brother’s death. “Jesus told her, ‘I am the resurrection and the
life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone
who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She
said to him, ‘Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the
Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world’” (John
11:25-27). Scripture commentators point out that in writing his account
of the raising of Lazarus, St. John intends that we should see Martha’s
words to Mary before the resurrection of Lazarus as a summons that
every Christian must obey. In her saying “The teacher is here and is
asking for you,” Jesus is calling every one of us to resurrection—now
in baptismal faith, forever in sharing his victory over death. And all
of us, as well as these three friends, are in our own unique way called
to special friendship with him. “Even in this life the Spirit
transforms us.... When Moses turned towards the Lord, his face shone in
the reflection of God: when the believer turns towards the Lord Jesus
and contemplates his glorious face, he is transformed into an ever
brighter image of that same glory. And this irradiating power which
transforms us into beings of light only comes from Christ because he
himself is wholly penetrated by that Spirit” (Durrwell, The Resurrection).
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: Isaiah
66:18-21; Psalm 117:1, 2; Hebrews 12:5-7,
11-13; Luke 13:22-30
Jesus passed
through towns and villages, teaching as he went and making his way to
Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?”
He answered them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I
tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough. After
the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you
stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ He
will say to you in reply, ‘I do not know where you are from. And you
will say, ‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our
streets.’ Then he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.
Depart from me, all you evildoers!’ And there will be
wailing and grinding of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves cast out.
And people will come from the east and the west and from the north and
the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God. For behold,
some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” (Luke 13:22-30)
I have at
various times come across people who do not believe in an Afterlife, which means
that they do not believe in a God nor in his judgment on our deeds. Nor do they
believe therefore that there is a heaven and a hell. I have even read of persons
who do believe in an Afterlife but in defiance of God have stated
that they choose hell. I have also heard of Satanists who opt to befriend and
collaborate with Satan against God and religion.
Such
attitudes almost defy comprehension if only because they fly in the face of
self-interest. The overwhelming percentage of people, though, prefer and want to
go to heaven. That is their preference, but the sad fact is that for a great number this is little
more than just a preference. That is to say, they do not think much of
heaven or hell, they are not concerned much about God’s judgment on
their life, and they are fairly content to drift through life expecting
that the bus that is life will take them to something pleasant
hereafter. If an observer were to gaze at the kind of choices such a
person makes every day, he would see little evidence of a notably
religious conscience. Pope Benedict before he became Pope wrote once
that if the atheist or agnostic were to live as if there is a God, his
concrete decisions would be morally well formed. Well, I tend to think
that many people who count themselves as believers live as if there is
not, or may not, be a God, and as if Christ and his Church do not
matter. They take a broad path not much affected by their religious
persuasion.
But what does our Lord
say in today’s Gospel? He says that we are to “strive to enter through
the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will
not be strong enough.” (Luke 13:22-30) There is a narrow gate of entry,
and there is a broad gate that many choose instead. The way to eternal life does
not pass through a broad and easy gate but through a narrow one. That narrow
gate is, in a word, the gate of seeking to do what is objectively right in
everything. This means forming one’s conscience in such a way that one does
arrive at the truth of what is to be done, and then actually does it whatever be
the cost. It is not enough to say to oneself and to others that I am doing what
I think is right. One can be mistaken and blind or half blind because one has
culpably failed to take the appropriate steps to be able to perceive what is
right. This can happen in all sectors of life right down to the most personal
aspects of individual and married life. A person convinces himself it is
acceptable to
miss Sunday Mass. A person
convinces himself it is acceptable to be a little unfaithful in
his marriage, or to engage in contraception. A person convinces himself
it is acceptable to avoid legitimate taxes. A person convinces himself
it is acceptable to defraud or to steal from the workplace. A person in
political life allows legislation for abortion or for embryonic stem
cell research or legislation confusing marriage and same sex unions,
all the while convincing himself that he is doing right. He disregards
the Church’s solemn teaching and the explicit warnings of the Church’s
pastors. He is being influenced in his judgment by a desire for
convenience, popularity or some other form of self-interest. He is
taking the broad and easy path of self-interest in one or other of its
numerous forms, a path in which the voice of the authentic and properly
formed conscience is ignored, evaded and gradually silenced. He is
learning to call evil good and what is good evil. His conscience is
being rendered blind.
When
attentive to a well formed moral conscience, the prudent person can
hear the voice of God who speaks to him or her. Elsewhere in the Gospel
our Lord says that the one who is faithful in small things will be
faithful in great. If we do not cultivate this sensitivity of
conscience in our judgments concerning the little duties of everyday
life, we shall be unable in conscience to judge on the great things. We
shall become culpably blind. A wonderful example for every lay person
with duties in the world is St Thomas More. There is now a statue of
him in the New South Wales state parliament. He was a saint in the
little things of his everyday life, and was able in conscience to judge
the truth of the great things of state when they arrived on the scene.
He had formed his conscience well and was able to see the truth of the
issues that were so crucial for the Church and the nation of his time,
issues that had ramifications for centuries to come. He entered by the
narrow gate and that was the gate that led to life. We form in
ourselves an upright and true moral conscience by educating ourselves
in the Word of God and the teaching of the Church, and by
conscientiously applying this to everyday life despite the disapproval
of others. A true conscience is supported by the gifts of the Holy
Spirit and helped by the advice of wise and holy people. Prayer and an
examination of conscience can also greatly assist one’s moral
formation.
Let
us take our Lord’s words to heart in every aspect of our daily lives,
let us take the narrow gate of forming our moral conscience in a way
that is pleasing to God, and then following it in our daily life,
whatever be the cost. This and this only is the way to life.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1776-1785
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Your heart weakens and you clutch at an earthly support. Very
good: but take care that what you grasp to stop you from falling
doesn't become a dead weight dragging you down, a chain enslaving you.
(The Way,
no.159)
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What
is the meaning of work?
Work is both a duty and a right through which human beings collaborate
with God the Creator. Indeed, by working with commitment and competence
we fulfil the potential inscribed in our nature, honour the Creator’s
gifts and the talents received from him, provide for ourselves and for
our families, and serve the human community. Furthermore, by the grace
of God, work can be a means of sanctification and collaboration with
Christ for the salvation of others. (CCC 2426-2428, 2460-2461)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.513)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
I call to you all
day long, have mercy on me, O Lord.
You
are good and forgiving, full of love for all who call on you (Ps 85: 3.5)
Almighty God, every good
thing comes from you. Fill our hearts with love for you,
increase our faith, and by your constant care protect the good
you have given us.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September 2) The
martyrs of September It is common knowledge that in
France on the eve of the great revolution of 1789 there were a number
of Catholic religious, priests and bishops who could scarcely be called
“good shepherds.” In contrast to these worldly churchmen, there were
other clerics who made up for the weakness of their brothers by
defending the faith even with their lives. Best known among these
Christian heroes were the clerics executed in September, 1792. Once
established, the revolutionary government had claimed the “republican”
right to take control of the Catholic Church in France. In 1790 it
enacted a “constitution” or law that denied to the pope any authority
over French Catholicism. Each French priest and bishop was ordered to
take an oath to uphold this law. Some priests did so. Most of them
decided they could not, because they would then be denying the
universal authority of the popes. For this refusal they would
eventually suffer. The “liberty” for which the French Revolution was
fought, was not very consistent. As the Revolution moved on, its
leadership came more and more into the hands of extremists. In 1792,
the radical Jacobins determined to punish with death not only the
aristocrats, but clergy who had refused the oath. The “non-jurors” — those who had refused the oath
— were arrested en masse in August,
1792, and herded into several Parisian monasteries out of which the
resident monks had been driven. These prisoners were priests, bishops
and religious from many dioceses. Then on September 2, a band of
violent armed men, perhaps 150 in number, was sent by the “Committee of
Vigilance” to one after the other of these temporary prisons. One
detail arrived at the Abbey of St. Germain just when a number of
prisoners got there, transferred from other places of detention. The
executioners shot them down in cold blood. Then they went to the old
Carmelite monastery, where another group of cutthroats joined them.
They ordered all the prisoners to come out into the garden, even the
oldest and most disabled. The clerics had already discussed once more
the question of taking the oath, and all had agreed they could not and
would not subscribe to it. Now the gang fell upon the first priests
they met and cut them down. Then they called out, “The Archbishop of
Arles!” Archbishop John du Lau of Arles was praying in the chapel. When
summoned, he came out and he said, “I am he whom you seek.” Thereupon,
they cracked his skull, stabbed him and trampled him underfoot. Then
the leader set up a “tribunal” before which the imprisoned were herded
and ordered to take the oath. All refused; so, as they passed down the
stairway, they were hacked to pieces by the murderers. The bishop of
Beauvais had earlier been wounded in the leg. When summoned, he
answered, “I do not refuse to die with the others, but I cannot walk. I
beg you to have the kindness to carry me where you wish me to go.” For
a moment, his courtesy silenced the assassins. But, when he, too,
refused the oath, he was killed like the rest. Later on the purge was
carried out elsewhere in France. Some 200 clergymen fell that
September, and they were only a small percentage of the 1500 clergy,
laymen and laywomen who were massacred in 1792 alone. (Saints)
Pope Pius XI beatified 191 of the priest
martyrs, in 1926, assigning to them the title of “Blessed John du Lau
and Companions, Martyrs.” They had been the helpless victims of wild
revolutionary ideology. As usual, however, their heroism in the defence
of the papacy was remembered long after the names of their
blood-thirsty executioners had been forgotten. They saved the
reputation of France as “eldest daughter of the Church.”
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Sirach 3:17-18,
20, 28-29; Psalm 68:4-5, 6-7, 10-11; Hebrews
12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14
On a Sabbath Jesus
went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the
people there were observing him carefully. He told a parable to those
who had been invited, noticing how they were choosing the places of
honour at the table. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding
banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honour. A more
distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host
who invited both of you may approach you and say, ‘Give your place to
this man,’ and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the
lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, go and take the lowest
place so that when the host comes to you he may say, ‘My friend, move
up to a higher position.’ Then you will enjoy the esteem of your
companions at the table. For every one who exalts himself will be
humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Then he said
to the host who invited him, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not
invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy
neighbours, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the
lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability
to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the
righteous.” (Luke 14:1, 7-14)
There have been many
religions in the history of man that have been not notably concerned
for the poor. Many have been distinguished for their striving for the
Absolute — whatever be the name they give to it or the image they have
of it — while often being forgetful of the needs of man and the world.
Among the many things that revealed religion places at the centre is
concern for and love of those in need. In the first instance this
surely derives from its teaching about the creation and very nature of
man. As we
read in the first pages of the Bible, man is not simply the greatest of
all the living things to come into being from the word of God. Man is
created in the image and likeness of God and is,
therefore, a child of God and God is his Father. God is the Father of
all mankind, and every man and woman is a child made in his likeness.
We may surely regard this fatherly creation of man — man who is “little
less than a god” as the psalm expresses it — as something of a
primordial covenant conferring on the least endowed and the least
circumstanced an inalienable dignity. He is a child of God made like
unto his heavenly Father and is a member of God’s vast family. Above
and beyond the dignity inherent in his very creation, the dignity of
every man features prominently in the developing covenants God forged
with his chosen people. The Mosaic legislation required constant
consideration for slaves, for sojourners and the needy, and the
prophets time and again denounced a religion of sacrifices and
oblations while flouting and neglecting the poor. God is portrayed as
wishing to have nothing to do with such a religion. Indeed, the whole
of the Law and the Prophets can be reduced, Christ said, to loving God
with all our heart and loving our neighbour as our self. So then, love
of neighbour — a real love and care, a love equal to that which we have
for ourselves — is an unavoidable linchpin of revealed religion.
But Christ
developed
this to what we might call stark levels. On one occasion he was asked,
in the context of love for neighbour, who is my neighbour? He proceeded
to tell the story of the Good Samaritan showing that one’s neighbour is
not just one’s family member, one’s associate in religion, or one’s
countryman, but anyone in need. Any person in need is my neighbour. We
must love anyone who is in need as we love our own very self. But
Christ gave a new commandment, and that is that we are to love one
another as he has loved us. That is the level of love which a true
disciple of Christ extends to the poor. St Paul writes that though he
was rich because he was God, Christ gave all this up and became as we
are and humbler still. He did all this so that we who are poor might
become rich. Christ loved the lowly and the poor, and apart from his
countless miracles on their behalf we read that when Judas went out at
the Last Supper some thought that he had gone to give some money to the
poor. This indicates that the giving of money to the poor was a
practice of the Twelve, instilled by the Master. Our Lord taught that
our concern for the poor will be an essential element in our judgment.
Our Lord describes in Matthew 25 the final judgment of Christ on each
and all. He will be our judge, and at our judgment he will say to those
on his right, come you whom my Father has blessed, for when I was
hungry you gave me food. When did we do this, the blessed will ask.
“Whenever you did this to the least of these brothers of mine, you did
it to me.” So Christ our Lord and God identifies entirely with the poor
and the lowly such that whatever we do to them he counts as having been
done to him. Therefore we serve and love Christ himself when we serve
and love the poor. They are to be reverenced and loved as we reverence
and love Christ himself, and we shall be rewarded greatly if we do
this. In our Gospel passage today (Luke 14:1,
7-14) our
Lord speaks of this to the leading Pharisee.
All through the history
of the Church there have been outstanding and saintly examples of
Christians who have taken our Lord’s teaching to heart. They have loved
and served the poor and in this way have reminded the Church’s children
and all mankind of the dignity of the poor and of their right to
reverence and care. They have also reminded all of the judgment to come
on those who serve the poor and also on those who neglect the poor when
they have been in a position to help them. Let us take our cue from the
likes of Blessed (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta who lived a holy life
given over to seeing Christ in the poor. This is revealed religion, the
religion God has taught to us. This is the service he wants of those
who strive to be pleasing to him. In this way we show our love for
Christ and become Christ-like ourselves.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2443-2449
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You write: 'Father, I have a... toothache in
my heart'. — I won't laugh, because I realize that you need a good
dentist to do a few 'extractions' for you.
If only you were willing!...
(The Way,
no.166)
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By what is love for the poor
inspired?
Love for the poor is inspired by the Gospel of the Beatitudes and by
the example of Jesus in his constant concern for the poor. Jesus said,
“Whatever you have done to the least of my brethren, you have done to
me” (Matthew 25:40). Love for the poor shows itself through the
struggle against material poverty and also against the many forms of
cultural, moral, and religious poverty. The spiritual and corporal
works of mercy and the many charitable institutions formed throughout
the centuries are a concrete witness to the preferential love for the
poor which characterizes the disciples of Jesus. (CCC 2443-2449,
2462-2463)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.520)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Lord, you are just,
and the judgments you make are right.
Show mercy when you judge me, your servant. (Ps 118: 137.124)
God our Father,
you redeem us and make us your children in Christ.
Look upon us, give us true
freedom and bring us to the inheritance you promised.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September 9) St. Peter Claver
(1580-1654) Born in Spain, the
son of a farmer, Peter Claver entered the Society of Jesus and was
ordained in 1615 in Cartagena, South America, where he had made his
higher studies. Cartagena was the centre of the infamous slave trade,
where many thousands of African slaves were landed after crossing the
ocean amid inhuman conditions, and then penned like animals in yards.
Their terrible plight, corporal and spiritual, tore at the heart of the
young Jesuit and he determined to devote himself to the alleviation of
their misery. At his profession he had vowed "to be a slave of the
slaves forever," and he now began to carry out this vow. Though his
main concern was the salvation of the slaves, he realized that their
bodily misery needed attention first. "We must speak to them with our
hands," he said, "before we can speak to them with our lips." His love
and his endurance seemed boundless. Taking only a minimum of sleep, he
ministered tirelessly to the slaves, washing and tending their wounds,
feeding them with food begged in the city, burying their dead,
comforting them so lovingly that he appeared like an angel from heaven.
He saw in them not only Christ's brothers and sisters, but souls for
whom He had bled and died. He instructed the adults by means of
interpreters and pictures, and during the forty years of his heroic
apostolic labours he is said to have baptized over 300,000, including
infants. He fought courageously for enforcement of the law providing
for the Christian marriage of the slaves and forbidding the separation
of families. Every spring he conducted missions for the slaves in the
country, and in fall for the sailors and traders in the city, preaching
in the streets' hearing confessions for hours on end, so that he also
became the apostle of Cartagena itself. The plague struck the city in
1650, and Peter was one of its first victims. For four years he was
bedridden in his cell, unable to work, and almost forgotten. However,
when he announced his approaching end, crowds came to kiss his hands
and feet and to take away from his cell whatever they could as relics.
He was given a public burial, and the fame of his heroism, his
holiness, and his miracles soon spread throughout the world. Leo XIII
declared him the patron of all missionary work among the Negroes. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: Wisdom
9:13-18b; Psalm 90:3-6,
12-17; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33
Great crowds were
travelling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed
them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife
and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be
my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does
not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for
its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding
himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and
say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to
finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and
decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose
another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if
not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for
peace terms. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all
his possessions cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:25-33)
The experience of
the death of a loved one or an acquaintance is
profoundly moving. The deep loss it entails can lead to bitterness or
it can lead to a new and positive beginning. A new clarity as to the
purpose of life can come to a person who sees before him the body of
the one he has known and loved. If he is blessed with faith he knows
with conviction that all comes from God and that following death we
return to God to be judged on how we have used his gift of life to us.
He thinks of the life of the one lying before him and of the course
he
took and of the choices he made beginning perhaps in his youth. The
course of our life is constituted by our choices and those choices are
made each day. They are the bricks that are placed one after the other
as the building that is our life and our self is erected. What kind of
a building is it, now that the person’s life is over? Is it but dust
and ashes, or in some great and wonderful sense has that person taken
with him something that will endure for ever as pleasing in the sight
of God? It all depends on the choices that were made, and our
individual choices will be governed by our goals. If our goals are
centred on this life only, our choices will be shaped accordingly. But
if we have a vivid awareness that this life is short and that eternity
is long, and that eternity will involve either heaven or hell, our
choices will be shaped by that all-important consideration. Day by day
one great and unavoidable event is ahead of us, and that is our death
and the judgment of God. Following God’s judgment we shall be
unendingly happy or unendingly miserable. These great facts loom over
the whole of life and at the centre of it all is the person of Jesus.
He stands at the centre of our life day by day and he holds out to us
the key to happiness here on earth and forever hereafter. He has come
to offer us the happiness God intends for us. We do not see him
physically, but he abides in our midst in the life of the Church
inviting us to follow him and in doing this to gain our true happiness
here on earth and in heaven hereafter.
We ought think much
of the happiness Christ came to offer us. It is
inextricably linked with him. Our true happiness is to be found
in knowing and loving and following him. At the Last Supper our Lord
said that eternal life consists in knowing the Father and Jesus Christ
whom he sent. What, then, is the happiness he offers the one who knows
him, loves him, follows him, lives and finally dies in him? Firstly it
is the happiness of living constantly in the grace of God and with a
share in his divine life. Our Lord said to his disciples, my peace I
leave to you — not the peace the world gives but my peace I give you.
In all the joys and sorrows of life, the Christian knows he has the
greatest possession of all that no one can take from him and that is
God. It is above all this which our Lord brings us and with it the
happiness that possessing God confers. In sickness or in health, in
good times and in bad, in life and in death, living in union with Jesus
brings the happiness of having God and knowing that we belong to him.
But then, the one who lives in Jesus has the joy of knowing that
provided he perseveres in following our Lord as his disciple in the
life of the Church, heaven also awaits him. We ought often think of
heaven. It is the prize that can spur us on to follow Christ closely.
The thought of living forever with God in heaven can nourish a great
desire to bear the cross of Christ with him each day, to accept the
sufferings that are part and parcel of doing the will of God in our
everyday life, and to die with Christ daily. Our Lord tells us that if
we aspire to be his disciples and so enter into glory with him, we must
carry our cross and come after him. He goes on to say that we must sit
down and count the cost. “Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is
enough for its completion?” And again, “Or what king marching into
battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand
troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with
twenty thousand troops?” What is the cost? Our Lord is very clear: “In
the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.” (Luke
14:25-33)
Renouncing all our
possessions means
giving our whole heart to Christ. It means striving to love him with
all our strength and disentangling our heart from all that is not
connected with him. We love our work, we love our family, we love
the interests God may have given us, but only inasmuch as they are in
him. It is in him that our true happiness lies, and we shall only be
truly happy if everything that makes up our life is connected with him.
He is the love of the Christian and love for Christ is to exceed any
other love. Were any other love to claim our heart in place of Jesus
that possession, as we might call it, is to be renounced. Christ is the
path to our true happiness both here and hereafter. Let us then resolve
for love of Jesus to follow in his footsteps daily, taking up our cross
and accompanying him. If we live in him we shall die in him, and if we
die in him we shall reign forever in heaven with him.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1720-1724
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That joke, that witty remark held on the tip of your tongue; the
cheerful smile for those who annoy you; that silence when you're
unjustly accused; your friendly conversation with people whom you find
boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail
or another in the persons who live with you... this, with perseverance,
is indeed solid interior mortification.
(The Way,
no.173)
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What is required by the ninth commandment?
(You
shall not covet your neighbour’s wife)
The ninth commandment requires that one overcome carnal concupiscence
in thought and in desire. The struggle against such concupiscence
entails purifying the heart and practising the virtue of temperance.
(CCC 2514-2516, 2528-2530)
(Compendium
of the Catechism of
the Catholic Church, no.527)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Give peace, Lord,
to those who wait for you
and your prophets will proclaim you as you
deserve.
Hear
the prayers of your servant and of your people Israel. (Sirach 36:18)
Almighty God, our
creator and guide, may we serve you with all our heart
and know your forgiveness in our lives.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September 16)
Saint Cornelius, pope and martyr, and Saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr
Saint Cornelius
was elected pope in 251 during the
persecutions of the Emperor Decius. His first challenge, besides the
ever present threat of the Roman authorities, was to bring an end to
the schism brought on by his rival, the first anti-pope
Novatian. He convened a synod of bishops to confirm him as the rightful
successor of Peter. The great controversy that arose as a result of the
Decian persecution was whether or not the Church could pardon and receive
back into the Church those who had apostacized in the face of
martyrdom. Against both the bishops who argued that the Church could
not welcome back apostates and those who argued that they should be
welcomed back but did not demand a heavy penance of the penitent,
Cornelius decreed that they must be welcomed back and insisted that
they perform an adequate penance. In 253 Cornelius was exiled by the
emperor Gallus and died of the hardships he endured in exile. He
is venerated as a martyr.
(Saints)
Saint Cyprian of
Carthage is second in importance
only to the great Saint Augustine as a figure and Father of the African
church. He was a close friend of Pope Cornelius and supported him both
against the anti-pope Novatian, and in his views concerning the
re-admittance of apostates into the Church. Saint Cyprian was born to
wealthy pagans about the year 190 and educated in the classics and
rhetoric. He converted at the age of 56, was ordained a priest a year
later and a bishop two years after that. His writings are of great
importance, especially his treatise on The Unity of the Catholic Church
in which he argues that unity is grounded in the authority of the
bishop, and among the bishops, in the primacy of the See of Rome.
During the Decian persecutions Cyprian considered it wiser to go into
hiding and guide his flock covertly rather than seek the glorious crown
of martyrdom, a decision that his enemies attacked him for. On
September 14, 258, however, he was martyred during the persecutions of
the emperor Valerian. In, "The Unity of the Catholic Church," St.
Cyprian writes, "You cannot have God for your Father if youdo not have
the Church for your mother.... God is one and Christ is one, and his
Church is one; one is the faith, and one is the people cemented
together by harmony into the strong unity of a body.... If we are the
heirs of Christ, let us abide in the peace of Christ; if we are the
sons of God, let us be lovers of peace." (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Exodus 32:7-11,
13-14; Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 17, 19; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32
Tax collectors and
sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and
scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats
with them.” So to them he addressed this parable. “What man among you
having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the
ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?
And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and
neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my
lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in
heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous
people who have no need of repentance. “Or what woman having ten coins
and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching
carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls
together her friends and neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me
because I have found the coin that I lost.’ In just the same way, I
tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one
sinner who repents.” Then he said, “A man had two sons, and the younger
son said to his father, ‘Father give me the share of your estate that
should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them.
After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set
off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life
of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine
struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired
himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to
tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the
swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought,
‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to
eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my
father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven
and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as
you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back
to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught
sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son,
embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have
sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called
your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the
finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on
his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us
celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come
to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration
began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way
back, as he neared the house,he heard the sound of music and dancing.
He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The
servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has
slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father
came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look,
all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders;
yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
But when your son returns, who swallowed up your property with
prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ He said to him,
‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But
now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and
has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’” (Luke 15:1-32)
The classical Latin
author Lucretius bears angry testimony to one recurring feature of
religion in the history of man. It is that religion so very often tends
to be very fearful. Lucretius hated religion because it made people
fearful. They feared the gods and higher powers and were at constant
pains to placate them. This they did by means, for instance, of various
ceremonies and sacrifices. This is not the whole story of religion by
any means, but it is certainly an important part of the picture. Why is
the religious person of history so often fearful and anxious?
One
reason is because he has the feeling that in his actions he has not
done what is pleasing to the powers above. He senses that he has
irritated them and so he has a guilty conscience. Now, this guilty
conscience is not a bad thing — indeed if it can be combined with
common sense and a balanced religious teaching it is a very good thing
as it brings a person to an acknowledgment of God as he understands him
to be. The sense of sin is undoubtedly one of the foundations of the
religious sense and it has been a terrible setback for modern Western
man that for a variety of reasons he is weak in his sense of sin.
Characteristically he lacks religious fear because he is sceptical of
or indifferent to God, and this is because he does not see or sense him
empirically. While there are widespread spiritual movements in
contemporary societies, in relation to the all-holy God of revelation
who demands holiness of us Western man tends to be agnostic and
secular. As a result his religious conscience is dormant, even though
his social conscience may be quite alive. He accepts the ethical
demands of his social environment but not the far more critical
obligations coming from the God on whom he constantly depends. The
classic fear of the gods and of their displeasure at man’s deeds has
been lost because God is presumed to be but a phantom, or at least able
to be safely ignored. God is dead or is entirely beyond us. What is the
answer to this modern religious deficiency? The answer has to lie in a
recovery of the most basic religious truths, that God exists, that
while he transcends us he is also very near and watching all, and that
he is our Judge. Especially important is the recovery of a sense that
he is our Judge.
All this is
to say that typically the man with a lively sense of God and of his own
condition has a sense of guilt before him, and this brings with it a
religious fear. Lucretius was right as to the fact that while man
is drawn to God he approaches Him with servile fear. Putting it
differently man senses God to be the Holy One who is “tremendum et
fascinans” — awesome, fearsome, fascinating. But now, what do we see in our
Gospel text today? The all-holy Son of God made man is standing in the midst of
sinners who sought to be near him. We read that the “tax
collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus.”
(Luke 15:1-32)
There is little servile fear. So greatly did this seeming anomaly
strike the scribes and Pharisees that we read that they immediately
began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with
them.” God was all-holy and so by definition he could not tolerate the
presence of sin. Yet here in the practice of Jesus holiness was being
compromised and sin as present in sinners was being accepted. How could
Jesus be regarded as a prophet of the Holy One who required that we be
holy for he is holy? So it seemed to them. So Christ proceeded to
show why it is that God had come to dwell among sinful men. It was
because of his love for them. He is like the shepherd who leaves the
ninety nine sheep who are safe and goes after the stray till he finds
it. He is like the woman who leaves the coins she has and searches
diligently till she finds the one that has been lost. Most especially
he is like the indulgent father who showered his wayward son with such
munificence and now welcomes his son back after his years of miserable
irresponsibility. All this is to say that God is the Holy One indeed,
but it is a holiness that is infinitely loving. God is love. His love
is a holy love, and his holiness is a loving holiness. In a word, God
is our Father. His hatred of sin is shown in his seeking out sinners in
order to redeem them from their sin. His holiness was shown in the love
that shone forth in his agony on the cross. The Holy God is our Father.
The surprise of divine revelation is that he is love. Sinful man as
exemplified in the publicans and sinners of our Gospel passage today
draw near to our Lord to hear the word of God, and they know they are
loved. They are like the prodigal son of our Lord’s parable in which
the father is shown to be all good and at the same time all loving.
The long
and the short of all this is that the all-holy God has revealed to us
that he is first and foremost Father. He is the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and because of the grace of Christ we now can call God
our Father. Jesus is his image and perfect revelation. He who sees me,
sees the Father, our Lord said. We who are sinners can draw near to him
with confidence. Let us every day place ourselves in the presence of
Jesus and ask him to help us to know him, to love him and to follow
him, and to be purged of our sins and transformed into his likeness. He
wants to make us holy with a holiness that is like his holiness,
loving. Let us strive to know the love of Christ and make it the basis
of our life.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.2777-2785
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Choose mortifications that don't mortify others.
(The Way,
no.179)
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What is prayer?
Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God, or the petition
of good things from him in accord with his will. It is always the gift
of God who comes to encounter man. Christian prayer is the personal and
living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is
infinitely good, with his Son Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Spirit
who dwells in their hearts. (CCC 2558-2565, 2590)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.534)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
I am the Saviour of
all people, says the Lord.
Whatever their troubles I
will answer their cry, and I will always be their Lord.
Father, guide us as you
guide creation according to your law of love.
May we love one another and come to
perfection in the eternal life prepared for us.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September 23) Saint
Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), priest, and Saint Constantius
St. Padre Pio da Pietrelcina (1887-1968) In
one of the largest such ceremonies in history, Pope John
Paul II canonized Padre Pio of Pietrelcina on June 16, 2002. It was the
45th canonization ceremony in Pope John Paul's pontificate. More than 300,000 people braved
blistering heat as they filled St. Peter's Square and nearby streets.
They heard the Holy Father praise the new saint for his prayer and
charity. "This is the most concrete synthesis of Padre Pio's teaching,"
said the pope. He also stressed Padre Pio's witness to the power of
suffering. If accepted with love, the Holy Father stressed, such
suffering can lead to "a privileged path of sanctity." Many people have
turned to the Italian Capuchin Franciscan to intercede with God on
their behalf; among them was the future Pope John Paul II. In 1962,
when he was still an archbishop in Poland, he wrote to Padre Pio and
asked him to pray for a Polish woman with throat cancer. Within two
weeks, she had been cured of her life-threatening disease. Born
Francesco Forgione, Padre Pio grew up in a family of farmers in
southern Italy. Twice (1898-1903 and 1910-17) his father worked in
Jamaica, New York, to provide the family income.
At the age of 15, Francesco joined the Capuchins and
took the name of Pio. He was ordained in 1910 and was drafted during
World War I. After he was discovered to have tuberculosis, he was
discharged. In 1917 he was assigned to the friary in San Giovanni
Rotondo, 75 miles from the city of Bari on the Adriatic. On September
20, 1918, as he was making his thanksgiving after Mass, Padre Pio had a
vision of Jesus. When the vision ended, he had the stigmata in his
hands, feet and side. Life became more complicated after that. Medical
doctors, Church authorities and curiosity seekers came to see Padre
Pio. In 1924 and again in 1931, the authenticity of the stigmata was
questioned; Padre Pio was not permitted to celebrate Mass publicly or
to hear confessions. He did not complain of these decisions, which were
soon reversed. However, he wrote no letters after 1924. His only other
writing, a pamphlet on the agony of Jesus, was done before 1924. Padre
Pio rarely left the friary after he received the stigmata, but busloads
of people soon began coming to see him. Each morning after a 5 a.m.
Mass in a crowded church, he heard confessions until noon. He took a
mid-morning break to bless the sick and all who came to see him. Every
afternoon he also heard confessions. In time his confessional ministry
would take 10 hours a day; penitents had to take a number so that the
situation could be handled. Many of them have said that Padre Pio knew
details of their lives that they had never mentioned. Padre Pio saw
Jesus in all the sick and suffering. At his urging, a fine hospital was
built on nearby Mount Gargano. The idea arose in 1940; a committee
began to collect money. Ground was broken in 1946. Building the
hospital was a technical wonder because of the difficulty of getting
water there and of hauling up the building supplies. This "House for
the Alleviation of Suffering" has 350 beds. A number of people have
reported cures they believe were received through the intercession of
Padre Pio. Those who assisted at his Masses came away edified; several
curiosity seekers were deeply moved. Like St. Francis, Padre Pio
sometimes had his habit torn or cut by souvenir hunters. One of Padre
Pio’s sufferings was that unscrupulous people several times circulated
prophecies that they claimed originated from him. He never made
prophecies about world events and never gave an opinion on matters that
he felt belonged to Church authorities to decide. He died on September
23, 1968, and was beatified in 1999.
St. Constantius
5th century Roman priest who fought against the Pelagians and suffered
at their hands in Rome.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Amos
8:4-7; Psalm 113:1-2, 4-8; 1 Timothy
2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13
Jesus said to his
disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for
squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I
hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you
can no longer be my steward.’ The steward said to himself, ‘What shall
I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from
me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what
I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may
welcome me into their homes.’ He called in his master’s debtors one by
one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He replied,
‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your
promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ Then to
another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied,
‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ The steward said to him, ‘Here is your
promissory note; write one for eighty.’ And the master commended that
dishonest steward for acting prudently. “For the children of this world
are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the
children of light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with
dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into
eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters
is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in
very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you
are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true
wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who
will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters. He will
either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise
the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.” (Luke 16:1-13)
At various times one
comes across persons who have very little commitment to a great cause.
They drift through life more or less just seeking personal
satisfaction. There are others who spend their lives with very worthy
commitments that give to their lives real nobility, even if hidden. The
nature of these
commitments vary enormously. There are some who are moved by the
thought of serving others and building a just society while having
little time for God. Indeed, they can reject God as basically a
distraction from the true work of man in the world. There is, for
example, the classic atheistic communist who, having embraced Marxism,
strove to create what
he regarded as a
classless society while being intolerant of religion as being a harmful
delusion.
That is an extreme, but elements of it can be found in
ordinary secular man who responds to the need to alleviate suffering in
the world and to build a just society, but who is prejudiced
against a religious perspective. But then there is the opposite class
of persons who are moved by the thought of God as the answer to the
aspirations of the heart of man but who have little genuine interest in
the needs of man and society. As we consider the history of the
world and the tapestry of cultures that make up mankind we can perhaps
see evidence of this polarity. I suspect that a case could be made for
thinking that the Eastern religions with their bent towards the
Absolute and away from the world have influenced the slower
material development of their societies. Whatever of that speculation,
there is certainly a difference in emphasis among various currents of
Christianity. There is what we might call the Christian who speaks of
God and Christ and who despises those Christians who speak constantly
of social development. There is also the Christian who speaks of
social, economic and political development and who despises all the
God-talk of the pious. The Church in her teaching of the Christian life
insists on both. We are to love God with all our heart and our
neighbour as ourself, indeed, we are to love our neighbour as Christ
loves us. Our judgment will depend on this.
In our Gospel today
our
Lord tells the story of the steward who is discovered to have
squandered his master’s property (Luke 16:1-13). In the story the same
steward goes on secretly to engage in dishonest accounting in order to
procure for himself the favour of his master’s creditors and so have
friends to help him after his own looming dismissal. Our Lord concludes
by referring to dishonesty. This setting of the parable can remind us
of the Church’s insistence that an essential element of the Christian
life is that the rights of man in society be respected and served. The
Church has, on the one hand, a vast body of teaching about our inner
relationship with and love for Christ. This teaching flows from her
dogmas, the encyclicals of the Popes, the writings of the saints and
the doctors of the Church, and anyone who sets out to attain sanctity
has plenty of approved spiritual guidance at hand. At the same time,
the Church has a very extensive body of social teaching that is
constantly expanding. Almost every Pope since Leo XIII in the
nineteenth century has developed this social teaching and in it the
Christian is able to find authoritative guidance as to his life and
obligations in the world and society. All the Church has done in this
is to unravel in an authoritative way the implications of revelation
for life in society.
The first three of the Ten Commandments set forth our obligations to
God as the foundation of the rest. Then in the next seven commandments
there is revealed what God requires of us in respect to our neighbour,
including our neighbour’s goods. Our Lord time and again insisted on
love for neighbour and respect for his dignity and rights. Our parable
today reminds us that this includes respect for our neighbour’s goods.
This respect for the goods of others is one of the linchpins of the
common good of society and if it is violated, and if a culture in which
the violation of the goods of others becomes accepted, then true
religion breaks down.
For
this reason the Catholic Christian strives to know the
Church’s social teaching. Progressively knowing it, he knows how to
promote respect for man in society. He insists on respect for promises
made and contracts agreed to and the restitution of goods that have
been damaged or taken away. He promotes the payment of just wages, he
promotes a culture that will have nothing to do with fraud and the
evasion of legitimate taxes. He does not accept the abuse of public or
private property, nor work deliberately done poorly, nor waste. He
respects the goods and property of others and of his employers and of
society in general, all as part of respecting the dignity of every man
and woman. He opposes all forms of dishonesty. He takes an interest and
if possible participates in political action and his guiding light is
the Church’s social doctrine, knowing as he does that the Church speaks
in the name of Christ and in her doctrine applies Christ’s
teaching to the life of individuals and societies. Let us then think of
the steward of our Gospel today who squandered and misused his master’s
goods, and resolve to live as a true member of Christ in society and
among men.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no. 2407-2418, 2419-1436.
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We must give ourselves in everything, we must deny ourselves in
everything: the sacrifice must be a holocaust.
(The Way,
no.186)
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From whom did Jesus learn how to pray?
Jesus, with his human heart, learned how to pray from his mother and
from the Jewish tradition. But his prayer sprang from a more secret
source because he is the eternal Son of God who in his holy humanity
offers his perfect filial prayer to his Father. (CCC 2599, 2620)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.541)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
O Lord, you had
just cause to judge men as you did:
because we sinned against you and disobeyed your will.
But now show us your
greatness of heart,
and treat us with your
unbounded kindness.
(Daniel 3)
Father, you show your
almighty power in your mercy and forgiveness.
Continue to fill us with your gifts of love.
Help
us hurry toward the eternal life you promise and come to share in the
joys of your kingdom.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September
30) Saint
Jerome, priest and doctor of the Church (340-420).
Born at Stridon, a town on the confines of Dalmatia and
Pannonia, about the year 340-2; died at Bethlehem, 30 September, 420.
He went to Rome, probably about 360, where he was baptized, and became
interested in 
ecclesiastical
matters. From Rome he went to Trier, famous for its schools, and there
began his theological studies. Later he went to Aquileia, and towards
373 he set out on a journey to the East. He settled first in Antioch,
where he heard Apollinaris of Laodicea, one of the first exegetes of
that time and not yet separated from the Church. From 374-9 Jerome led
an ascetical life in the desert of Chalcis, south-west of Antioch.
Ordained priest at Antioch, he went to Constantinople (380-81), where a
friendship sprang up between him and St. Gregory of Nazianzus. From 382
to August 385 he made another sojourn in Rome, not far from Pope
Damasus. When the latter died (11 December, 384) his position became a
very difficult one. His harsh criticisms had made him bitter enemies,
who tried to ruin him. After a few months he was compelled to leave
Rome. By way of Antioch and Alexandria he reached Bethlehem, in 386. He
settled there in a monastery near a convent founded by two Roman
ladies, Paula and Eustochium, who followed him to Palestine. Henceforth
he led a life of asceticism and study; but even then he was troubled by
controversies which will be mentioned later, one with Rufinus and the
other with the Pelagians.
The
literary activity of St. Jerome, although very prolific, may be summed
up under a few principal heads: works on the Bible; theological
controversies; historical works; various letters; translations. But
perhaps the chronology of his more important writings will enable us to
follow more easily the development of his studies.
A first period extends to his sojourn in Rome (382), a period of
preparation. From this period we have the translation of the homilies
of Origen on Jeremias, Ezechiel, and Isaias (379-81), and about the
same time the translation of the Chronicle of Eusebius; then the "Vita
S. Pauli, prima eremitae" (374-379). A second period extends from his
sojourn in Rome to the beginning of the translation of the Old
Testament from the Hebrew (382-390). During this period the exegetical
vocation of St. Jerome asserted itself under the influence of Pope
Damasus, and took definite shape when the opposition of the
ecclesiastics of Rome compelled the caustic Dalmatian to renounce
ecclesiastical advancement and retire to Bethlehem. In 384 we have the
correction of the Latin version of the Four Gospels; in 385, the
Epistles of St. Paul; in 384, a first revision of the Latin Psalms
according to the accepted text of the Septuagint (Roman Psalter); in
384, the revision of the Latin version of the Book of Job, after the
accepted version of the Septuagint; between 386 and 391 a second
revision of the Latin Psalter, this time according to the text of the
"Hexapla" of Origen (Gallican Psalter, embodied in the Vulgate). It is
doubtful whether he revised the entire version of the Old Testament
according to the Greek of the Septuagint. In 382-383 "Altercatio
Luciferiani et Orthodoxi" and "De perpetua Virginitate B. Mariae;
adversus Helvidium". In 387-388, commentaries on the Epistles to
Philemon, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to Titus; and in 389-390,
on Ecclesiastes.
Between 390 and 405, St. Jerome gave all his attention to the
translation of the Old Testament according to the Hebrew, but this work
alternated with many others. Between 390-394 he translated the Books of
Samuel and of Kings, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Canticle of
Canticles, Esdras, and Paralipomena. In 390 he translated the treatise
"De Spiritu Sancto" of Didymus of Alexandria; in 389-90, he drew up his
"Quaestiones hebraicae in Genesim" and "De interpretatione nominum
hebraicorum." In 391-92 he wrote the "Vita S. Hilarionis", the "Vita
Malchi, monachi captivi", and commentaries on Nahum, Micheas,
Sophonias, Aggeus, Habacuc. In 392-93, "De viris illustribus", and
"Adversus Jovinianum"; in 395, commentaries on Jonas and Abdias; in
398, revision of the remainder of the Latin version of the New
Testament, and about that time commentaries on chapters 13-23 of
Isaias; in 398, an unfinished work "Contra Joannem Hierosolymitanum";
in 401, "Apologeticum adversus Rufinum"; between 403-406, "Contra
Vigilantium"; finally from 398 to 405, completion of the version of the
Old Testament according to the Hebrew. In the last period of his life,
from 405 to 420, St. Jerome took up the series of his commentaries
interrupted for seven years. In 406, he commented on Osee, Joel, Amos,
Zacharias, Malachias; in 408, on Daniel; from 408 to 410, on the
remainder of Isaias; from 410 to 415, on Ezechiel; from 415-420, on
Jeremias. From 401 to 410 date what is left of his sermons; treatises
on St. Mark, homilies on the Psalms, on various subjects, and on the
Gospels; in 415, "Dialogi contra Pelagianos".
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Amos 6:1a,
4-7; Psalm 146:7, 8-10; 1 Timothy
6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31
Jesus said to
the
Pharisees: "There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and
fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a
poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten
his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even
used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, he was carried
away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was
buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised
his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried
out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of
his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in
these flames.' Abraham replied, 'My child, remember that you received
what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what
was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent
anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or
from your side to ours.’ He said, 'Then I beg you, father, send him to
my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them,
lest they too come to this place of torment.' But Abraham replied,
'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.' He said,
'Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they
will repent.' Then Abraham said, 'If they will not listen to Moses and
the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise
from the dead.'" (Luke 16:19-31)
There have
been
many teachers of mankind and they are easily remembered. We think of
the great Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. We
think of a few classical Roman writers such as Cicero. We think
of religious figures of great influence such as Zoroaster or Buddha or
Mahomet. We think of Moses and the Hebrew prophets. They each had their
preferred way of expressing their doctrine. Towering above them all in
influence and in sublimity of teaching is Jesus Christ. Our Lord
expresses his doctrine concretely and with imagery, and this is
especially shown in his repeated use of the parable or story. Our
Gospel passage today is a case in point in
which our Lord, not
content simply to direct us to help the poor, tells a story of the rich
man who lacked all concern for the poor man at the very gate of his
home. The rich man “dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined
sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named
Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of
the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even used to come
and lick his sores.” (Luke 16:19-31) There was no excuse
whatever because the poor man was constantly before the rich man at his
very gate. The sight of him was unavoidable and the rich man’s neglect
would have involved a repeated, even a daily hard-heartedness that
silently refused to do anything for the poor man. This was the story of
his life and he passed out of this life unrepentant. That this
deliberate neglect was a horror to God and profoundly offensive to him
is shown in the condemnation of the rich man to hell. When he died he
was buried in hell. Our parable tells us of how important to God is the
poor man and how serious is our responsibility to assist him. So
precious is the poor man to God that when he dies he is taken by the
angels to the intimate friendship of Abraham. Our Lord is not intending
here to set forth the dispositions the poor man needs in order to be
saved. He is just illustrating the simple point that God loves the poor
man and looks on it as a most serious sin to neglect him.
Our Lord’s
teaching
also shows that the true foundations of an ethical concern for those in
need lie in religion. An atheistic or agnostic commitment to the poor
and needy leaves out a consideration that is fundamental. That
consideration is that the dictate of conscience that we assist the poor
is an echo of the voice of God. Furthermore and very importantly,
conscience dictates and God requires that we love and assist not only
the poor at our very gate but all the poor that we can. The setting of
our Lord’s parable is a rich man who has lying at the very gate of his
mansion a poor man who is helpless. But what of a situation in which
the poor man is by no means at the gate of someone’s home, but is out
of sight and far away? The fact is that many in a prosperous country
live in relative comfort and rarely see a poor and desperate person in
the flesh. The poor are not lying prostrate at their gates. They do not
see them every day, nor do they physically pass them by, and because
the poor are out of sight they are very easily out of mind — with the
result that great numbers of the poor are neglected. That is to say
because we are not often coming across poor people ourselves in our
everyday lives we can pass through much of life doing little for them.
But we know full well that there are boundless numbers of the poor in
the world and this fact is borne in on us every day by the media and
the appeals of various bodies, including and especially the Church. And
so just as the rich man of the parable had no excuse because the poor
man Lazarus lay at his very gate where he passed by so very often when
leaving his house, so too due to the media and the efforts of other
bodies of aid we do have these poor, out of sight and perhaps far away,
nevertheless at our very gate as it were. The poor of our country and
our own towns and suburbs whom we may scarcely ever see in daily life
are brought to our attention by the St Vincent de Paul society and by
numerous other organizations who assist them and who are able to help
us assist them. The poor who are so far away in other countries are
brought to our very gates by the daily news and by television.
Furthermore, there are numerous kinds of poor. There are those who are
poor in financial resources. There are those who are poor in health,
those poor in spiritual gifts and resources. Anyone truly in need ought
be the object of our love and help.
Let us take to
heart what is so dear to God, love and service of the poor. The special
danger of those blessed by God with life in a prosperous country is
that they can blithely neglect the poor. Whether at the gate or far
away out of sight, they are precious to the heart of God and as our
Lord teaches in Matthew 25, whatever we do to the poor Christ will
regard as having been done to him. We shall be rewarded or punished
accordingly. Let us then put on the mind of Christ in our love for the
poor.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.2437-2442
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tender, soft, flabby...: that's not the way I want you. It's about
time you got rid of that peculiar pity you feel for yourself.
(The Way,
no.193)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How did the first Christian community
in Jerusalem pray?
At the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles it is written that in
the
first community of Jerusalem, educated in the life of prayer by the
Holy Spirit, the faithful “devoted themselves to the teaching of the
apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread, and to
the prayers” (Acts 2:42). (CCC 2623-2624)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.548)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-seventh
Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
O Lord, you have
given everything its place in the world,
and no one can make it otherwise. For it is your creation,
the heavens and the earth and the stars: you are
the Lord of all.
Father, your love for us
surpasses all our hopes and desires.
Forgive our failings, keep
us in your peace and lead us in the way of salvation.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(October 7) Our
Lady of the Rosary
When the heresy of the Albigensians was growing in the district of
Toulouse and striking deeper roots day by day, St. Dominic, who had
just laid the foundations of the Order of Preachers, threw himself
whole-heartedly into the task of destroying this heresy. That he might
be the better able to overcome it, he implored with earnest prayers the
aid of the Blessed Virgin. She instructed Dominic to preach the Rosary
to the people as 
a unique safeguard
against heresy and vice, and he carried out this commission with
wonderful ardour of soul and with great success. From that time, then,
St. Dominic began to promulgate and promote this method of praying. And
the fact that he was its founder and originator has from time to time
been stated in papal encyclicals.
From this salutary practice
countless fruits have flowed to Christendom. Among these, we should
especially mention the victory over the powerful tyranny of the Turks
won at the battle of Lepanto by St. Pius V and the Christian princes he
had aroused. For, as this victory was won on the very day on which the
sodalities of the most holy Rosary throughout the world had been
offering their accustomed supplications and carrying out the prescribed
prayers, it was rightly attributed to these prayers. Gregory XIII
testified to this fact when he decreed that for such a unique benefit
thanks should always be offered everywhere throughout the world to the
Blessed Virgin under the title of the Rosary. Other Popes have granted
almost innumerable indulgences to the recitation of the Rosary and to
Rosary societies.
Clement XI, noting the circumstances of the
equally famous victory of Charles VI, the emperor-elect, over the
innumerable forces of the Turks in Hungary in the year 1716, held that
this victory was to be attributed to the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin. The victory occurred on the feast of the Dedication of Our Lady
of the Snows; and, at almost the time of the battle, the confraternity
of the Most Holy Rosary was offering a public and solemn supplication
in the city of Rome, with a great crowd of people pouring out fervent
prayers to God with great devotion for the overthrow of the Turks and
humbly imploring the powerful aid of the Virgin Mother of God to help
the Christians. Looking also with the eyes of faith at the raising of
the Turks' siege of the island of Corcyra shortly afterwards, he held
that this victory too must be ascribed to the patronage of the Blessed
Virgin. To keep alive, therefore, the memory of these great benefits
and to assure a perpetual thanksgiving for them, Clement extended the
feast of the Most Holy Rosary to the universal Church. Benedict XIII
decreed that all these things be written into the Roman Breviary. Leo
XIII in repeated encyclicals strongly urged all the faithful throughout
the world to recite the Rosary especially during the month of October,
raised the rank of the feast, and added to the Litany of Loretto the
invocation "Queen of the Most Holy Rosary." He also granted a special
Office to be recited by the universal Church on this feast. The Popes
over the last century have repeatedly stressed the great importance of
devotion to Mary through the Rosary.
Click centre arrow to start video
The apostles said
to the Lord, "Increase our faith." The Lord replied, "If you have faith
the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be
uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. "Who among you
would say to your servant who has just come in from ploughing or tending
sheep in the field, 'Come here immediately and take your place at
table'? Would he not rather say to him, 'Prepare something for me to
eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may
eat and drink when I am finished'? Is he grateful to that servant
because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you
have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable
servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'"
(Luke 17:5-10)
I once heard a
bishop suggest that the feast of the Annunciation of the Lord (March
25) ought be celebrated as a holy day of obligation. Whatever of that,
the Gospel scene of the Annunciation in St Luke is full of
significance. The Angel addresses Mary with profound respect as the one
who is full of grace. The Lord is with her. His words place in the
forefront of Mary’s life the grace of God which made her the all-holy
person she is. His words remind us that God’s grace is the life and the
foundation of holiness. But there is the other side to a life of
holiness which is expressed by Mary’s response to the Angel. “Behold
the handmaid of the Lord,” Mary said. “Be it done unto me
according to your word.” Mary was full of grace, and grace was indeed
the source of her gifts and her holiness. But it required her
cooperation. In that sense, through the grace of God, she herself
merited the profound respect shown her by the Angel. In everything she
depended on God and his grace but in another sense in his plans God
depended on her free response. Thus through her free and ongoing
response Mary merited the holiness she attained. The thought of Mary
leads us to think on the one hand of the grace of God sustaining us in
everything, and
on the other of how through our obedience and faith we merit
the reward of holiness and eternal life. In our Gospel passage today
our Lord speaks of the active power of God uprooting a tree and
planting it in the sea (Luke 17:5-10). It reminds us of the
power of grace on which we depend. The Gospel also refers to our duty,
reminding us that by our obedience to God we merit salvation.
In the history of
the Church there have been two errors in respect to this point. In the
early Church a person by the name of Pelagius taught that it is through
our own efforts that we attain holiness and salvation. Pelagius
probably saw many people making little effort to follow our Lord
closely and saw the results of that in their lack of a Christian life.
On the other hand he perhaps saw those who made every effort and saw
the good results of this. He concluded and laid it down that everything
depends on our own efforts. The Church, particularly St Augustine,
stated that this was a great error. Everything depends ultimately on
the grace of God. By God’s grace at our baptism we are made just and
holy and our sins are taken away. This is not just how God chooses to
regard us, but is the effect in us of the gift of his grace. By means
of this gift of grace we are able freely to respond in faith and
obedience to Christ. That grace is God’s gift and initiative. If we
respond to this gift in faith and obedience we are then able — again,
by the assistance and power of God’s grace — to merit further gifts of
grace from God. His grace grants us an habitual share in his
Trinitarian life. It sanctifies us and unless it is destroyed by
serious sin it gives us an abiding friendship with him. There are also
many other kinds of grace apart from this habitual sanctifying grace.
There are actual graces that are offered to us for specific
circumstances. There are those graces proper to each Sacrament, and
there are special graces or charisms that God grants to this or that
person for the good of others and the Church. Through his grace God
precedes, prepares and elicits our free response to him. It responds to
our deepest desires and it calls for our full cooperation. So all our
life we must seek and depend on the grace of God.
At the same
time, there has been the opposite error of thinking that nothing other
than grace is involved in our sanctification and salvation. Grace is
fundamental and constantly necessary, but so is our free cooperation.
While whatever we merit from our obedience and cooperation with God is,
in the first instance, due to the grace of God, unless we freely
cooperate little will come of it. Grace comes first and foremost, but
our efforts next and also. When I was young a priest once said that
holiness is 99% due to the grace of God, and 1% due to our efforts. But
we must put in that full 1% and that is our whole strength. All will
fall if we fail to put in our bit, and that 1% bit is our full effort
to love God with all our mind, heart and soul. All this is to say that
we have a mighty God that we can rely on, one who pours into our hearts
his wonderful help that can take us so very far and that can produce a
wonderful harvest of holiness in our life. But just as with the virgin
Mary he awaits our daily and constant assent. We must choose to say our
daily yes to all the calls of his divine plan for us, and then live out
that assent in our daily duties and responsibilities. With that free
cooperation he can work wonders in our souls far beyond our imagining.
Let us then begin again every day, saying yes to whatever God wants to
do with us, for us, in us, and through us. It is through his grace and
our merits that his divine plan for our salvation and the salvation of
others will be achieved.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1996-2016
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You don't conquer yourself, you don't practise self— denial,
because you are proud. You lead a life of penance? Don't forget that
pride is compatible with penance... Furthermore: your sorrow, after
your falls, after your failures in generosity — is it true sorrow or is
it the petty disappointment of seeing yourself so small and helpless?
How far you are from Jesus if you are not humble..., even though your
disciplines each day bring forth fresh roses!
(The Way,
no.200)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When is thanksgiving given to God?
The Church gives thanks to God unceasingly, above all in celebrating
the Eucharist in which Christ allows her to participate in his own
thanksgiving to the Father. For the Christian every event becomes a
reason for giving thanks. (CCC 2637-2638, 2648)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.555)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-eighth
Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
If you, O Lord,
laid bare our guilt, who could endure it?
But you are forgiving, God of Israel.
Lord, our help and
guide, make your love the foundation of our lives.
May our love for you
express itself in our eagerness to do good for others.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(October 14) St Callistus I, pope
and martyr (died 222 or 223).
Early in the third century, it was to Callistus, then a deacon, that
Pope Saint Zephyrinus confided the government of the clergy, as well as
the creation and maintenance of the Christian cemeteries, which at that
time 
were the
catacombs of Rome. At the death of the Sovereign Pontiff, Callistus
succeeded him as Head of the Church. It is he who made obligatory for
the entire Church, the fast of the Ember Days which the Apostles had
instituted, to bring down blessings on each season of the year. During
his time, the Christians began to build churches, which though
destroyed during the various persecutions, were eventually rebuilt.
Among the catacombs owed to his government, is the one on the Appian
Way which bears his name. Many precious memories are conserved there;
in it are found the tomb of Saint Cecilia, the crypts of several popes,
and paintings which attest the perfect conformity of the primitive
Faith with that of the present-day Church. During the pontificate of
Saint Callistus, several very striking conversions occurred among the
very officers of the persecuting emperor Alexander Severus. At one time
an officer, his family and household, forty-two persons in all, were
baptized by the Pope on the same day. Many others asked him for
Baptism; among them a Senator and sixty-eight persons of his household,
and a guardian of the saintly Pope, whose name was Privatus, after the
prayers of the Holy Father had cured him of an ulcer. All these new
Christians were martyred, and their heads were exposed at the various
gates of Rome to discourage any who would propagate the Faith of Christ
in that city. Despite the continuing pursuits and his constant
solicitude for all the churches, Saint Callistus found the means to
have a diligent search made by fishermen for the body of a priest of
his clergy, which had been cast into the Tiber after his martyrdom.
When it was found he was filled with joy, and buried it with hymns of
praise. During the persecution Saint Callistus was obliged to take
shelter in the poor and populous quarters of the city. The martyred
priest, Calipodius, appeared to him soon afterwards, saying: “Father,
take courage; the hour of the reward is approaching; your crown will be
proportionate to your sufferings.” Soon afterwards he was discovered
there, and the house was guarded by soldiers who received the order to
allow no food to enter it for several days. And Saint Callistus was
martyred in his turn. With a rock suspended from his neck, he was
thrown from a window into a well on October 14, 223. The priest
Asterius recovered and buried his body in the catacomb named for
Calipodius. A week later Asterius too was arrested and thrown into the
Tiber. The Christians interred this martyr also.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
2 Kings
5:14-17; Psalm 98:1-4; 2 Timothy
2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19
As Jesus continued
his journey to Jerusalem, he travelled through Samaria and Galilee. As
he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance
from him and raised their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on
us!" And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the
priests." As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them,
realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.
Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the
other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to
God?" Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you." (Luke 17:11-19)
As all Christians know — or should know
— Christ gave us a specific prayer in answer to the
request of his disciples that he teach them how to pray. That prayer,
the Lord’s Prayer, is precious to the entire Church for all ages. In
her catechisms she teaches the faithful how to pray largely by
commenting on the Lord’s Prayer. But that text is not the only one that
contains our Lord’s teaching on how we ought pray. Scattered throughout
the Gospels and of course throughout the rest of the Scriptures we find
plenty of teaching on prayer. Our gospel passage today is a case in
point. The lepers gathered in their group call out to our Lord
with a prayer that ought be a model for fallen man. All men, as St Paul
writes in the Letter to the Romans, are under the power of sin and the
wages of sin are death. By nature, fallen as it is, man is a leper in
the sight of God and all he can do is what the lepers of our Gospel
passage today did, call out to Christ that he have pity on them. That
plea for mercy is surely most pleasing to God for it recognises our
condition and it recognises God as the one on whom we depend, the one
who is all-powerful and all merciful. That their prayer was pleasing to
Christ is shown by the immediate answer it evoked from Christ that they
go forthwith to the priests to show themselves. They must have believed
because they immediately went and as they were going they were healed.
Furthermore, when the lone Samaritan returned to our Lord, our Lord
told him that his faith had saved him. So, due
to the goodness of God their humble and faith-filled prayer of petition
in itself had been admirable. Our Gospel scene of the lepers reminds us
of how important are petitions we make to God on our own behalf and on
behalf of others. Had they not asked, they may not have received. Their
prayer is used at the beginning of every Mass when we repeat after
acknowledging our sins, “Lord have mercy! Christ have mercy!” As it was
the starting point of the prayer of the lepers, so it is with us.
But the cry of the
lepers for mercy is not the whole story about their prayer. As we see
from
our Lord’s words in our passage today, even if (and especially if) we
receive
exactly and all of what we ask for, our prayer ought not begin and end
with petitions. In
the case of our lepers their prayer, humble, importunate and
faith-filled as it was, certainly proved to be incomplete. It gained
the blessing they had sought, but it was not wholly pleasing to Christ
for they forgot to thank and praise the Giver of the blessing. We read
that “one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying
God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.
He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, ‘Ten were cleansed, were they
not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to
give thanks to God?’” (Luke
17:11-19).
In his great story of the Good Samaritan our Lord holds up the example
of the kindness of a Samaritan towards one in need. Here in this Gospel
passage he holds up
another Samaritan — this time one in real life — who glorified and
thanked God for his goodness in freeing him from his affliction. All
this is to say that we ought constantly recollect the blessings we have
received from God both in answer to our prayers and those that have
come unsolicited. He has given us life and various opportunities,
however modest we may think them to be. If we have petitioned him with
the spirit of our lepers today, we shall have found that he has
answered many of our prayers and many more in ways we are not aware of.
There is so much to thank God for, and those blessings ought lead us to
praise and glorify him. Let our lives then be filled with prayer of
petition and intercession for ourselves and for others, and at the same
time with praise,
adoration and thanksgiving. We shall be able to praise and glorify God
the more as we grow in thanksgiving. Let us thank God repeatedly for
all we have received, including — and this is most important — the
difficulties, the disappointments and the crosses he has deigned to
allow and even send. He sends and allows them as a sign of his love.
They immerse us in the mystery of Christ if we but accept them from God
humbly. The cross is the means of special union with Christ, and for
this we ought be so very grateful.
St
John Vianney (the Cure of Ars) used to read lots of lives of the
saints. We should too. Biography is both interesting and instructive,
especially the biographies of great people. True greatness consists in
holiness, and holiness comes from living in Christ. The saints teach us
so much about Christian prayer. They knew how to pray for themselves
and for others. They knew how to thank God for all that they had
received from him, including and especially the difficulties and
crosses of life. They knew how to praise and glorify and adore him. Let
us then ask God to give us the grace to be able to pray well and to
immerse our life in a spirit of true prayer.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no. 2637-2643
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Give thanks, as for a very special favour, for that holy
abhorrence you feel for yourself.
(The Way,
no.207)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How is Christian prayer Marian?
Because of her singular cooperation with the action of the Holy Spirit,
the Church loves to pray to Mary and with Mary, the perfect ‘pray-er’,
and to “magnify” and invoke the Lord with her. Mary in effect shows us
the “Way” who is her Son, the one and only Mediator. (CCC 2673-2679,
2682)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.562)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-ninth
Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
I call upon you,
God, for you will answer me; bend your ear and hear my prayer.
Guard me as the pupil of your eye; hide me in the shade of your
wings.
Almighty and ever-living
God, our source of power and inspiration,
give us strength and joy in serving you as followers of Christ.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(October 21) Saint Celine We
have very few details about the life of this saint who is best known as
the mother of St. Remigius, Bishop of Rheims at the time of the
conversion of the people of Gaul under Clovis. St. Celine miraculously
gave birth to St. Remigius when she was already at an advanced age.
Immediately after giving birth, about 438, she also gave sight to the
hermit Montanus who had three times foretold the birth of the saintly
Bishop. After a holy life filled with good works and assiduous
prayer, this saintly woman attained the rewards of heaven about the
year 458. She was buried near Lyons, probably at Cerny, where she had
lived. Unfortunately her relics were destroyed during the French
Revolution. (Catholic Online)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Exodus
17:8-13; Psalm 121:1-8; 2 Timothy
3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8
Jesus told his
disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without
becoming weary. He said, "There was a judge in a certain town who
neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that
town used to come to him and say, 'Render a just decision for me
against my adversary.' For a long time the judge was unwilling, but
eventually he thought, 'While it is true that I neither fear God nor
respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall
deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.'"
The Lord said, "Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will
not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him
day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see
to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man
comes, will he find faith on earth?" (Luke 18:1-8)
The prayer of
petition has always been a topic of controversy. I remember forty years
ago at the University of Sydney there was a lunchtime address by a
priest who was a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy there, and
his topic was prayer of petition. Among the audience there were two
professors of Philosophy in the same department. While one took issue
with
him, the other (who was an agnostic) defended him. Does praying to God
for what we need make
any difference to
things? Jesus Christ, the supreme Teacher of mankind in all that
relates to God and man’s relationship with him, solemnly assures us
that prayer is indeed effective and that
God will hasten to the aid of
the one who appeals to him. But in our Gospel passage today our Lord
tells us that we must ask God in faith, and that faith is shown in perseverence in prayer. Typically, he tells a story to illustrate this
feature of the prayer that God answers. The widow of his story simply
refuses to give up on asking the unjust judge and out of weariness and
frustration at her importunity he gives in to her request. This
illustration our Lord gives is drawn from life and he points out if
this perseverance is effective in human affairs then how much more will
persistence in asking be effective with the good God. “Will not God
then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and
night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it
that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes,
will he find faith on earth?" (Luke
18:1-8). We
must have the faith to turn to God and the faith to be persevering in
our request. Father Benedict Groeschel of the United States once asked
on television what one can do for a close relative who has lapsed from
the practice of the Christian faith. He said, first and foremost to
begin praying for that person, and then to keep praying for him. He
went on to make further judicious suggestions, but the first one was
the persevering prayer of petition.
We must persevere
in our petitions because there are many forces opposing the blessings
God wishes to bestow upon us. Among those opposing forces are the
demonic powers who fight against God and his plan of redemption. In his
public ministry our Lord was continually being opposed by Satan who
actually succeeded in gaining dominion over one of our Lord’s own
Twelve. At the Last Supper Satan finally “entered” into Judas, and
Judas went out into the “night” to organize his betrayal of the Master.
Our Lord told the scribes and Pharisees who were his enemies that their
father was the devil. At the Last Supper he spoke of the prince of this
world and how he was coming. Now, imagine how persevering our Lord’s
own prayer of petition must have been during the whole of his public
ministry! He exhorted his disciples on one occasion to pray that the
Lord of the harvest would send labourers to the harvest. He must have
prayed this prayer constantly. The prayer for forgiveness of his
enemies that he expressed on the cross he must have prayed
perseveringly during his public ministry. The results of that prayer of
Christ is shown in the harvest of souls after his ascension and the
sending of the Holy Spirit — it was
striking.
The
Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Christ our High Priest is
continually now interceding for us at the right hand of the
Father. Christ’s prayer of petition was and continues to be
persevering. It never gave up and it does not now give up. This
powerful and persevering prayer of Christ our Redeemer and High Priest
is the hope of the world and it is this which opposes the powers of
darkness and the fallen tendencies of sinful man. Christ’s prayer
reduces strongholds, and we who are in him by baptism and faith are
called to pray perseveringly for our needs united to him who prays for
them too. We do not pray persistently on our own. We pray in union with
Christ and in union with all those who are in Christ, Mary his mother,
all the angels and saints, and all those still on the way to heaven.
This persevering
prayer of petition offered by Christ our High Priest is made present at
Mass. Mass is the one and unique sacrifice of Calvary mysteriously and
sacramentally made present. At Mass we are able to unite ourselves to
Christ who perseveringly makes petitions to his heavenly Father on our
behalf. Our prayer of petition becomes
powerful when made in union with
him. Let us then, as our Lord says elsewhere, pray always and never
lose heart.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church no. 2629-2636
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Say to your body: I would rather keep you in slavery than be
myself a
slave of yours.
(The
Way, no.214)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How can vocal
prayer be described?
Vocal prayer associates the body with the interior prayer of the heart.
Even the most interior prayer, however, cannot dispense with vocal
prayer. In any case it must always spring from a personal faith. With
the Our Father Jesus has taught us a perfect form of vocal prayer. (CCC
2700-2704, 2722)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.569)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thirtieth
Sunday in Ordinary Time C
(October 28) St
Simon and St Jude, Apostles Simon is
usually called the “Canaanaean” and also the “Zealot”, probably because
he belonged to the Jewish party of the “Zealots of the Law.” Jude also
called Thaddeus or “Courageous”, is the author of the short epistle in
the New Testament with his name. They probably preached in Mesopotamia
and Persia and were martyred. Their names appear in the Roman Canon.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Sirach 35:12-14,
16-18; Psalm 34:2-3, 17-19,
23;
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14
Jesus addressed
this parable to those who were convinced of their own
righteousness and despised everyone else. "Two people went up to the
temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax
collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to
himself, 'O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity –
greedy, dishonest, adulterous – or even like this tax collector. I
fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax
collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to
heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a
sinner.' I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former;
for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles
himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:9-14)
The Gospel passage
before us is one of the very famous parables of our
Lord. It is the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. They are
both in the Temple praying and our Lord sets before his audience the
prayer that formed in the heart of each and he tells us what was
the upshot of each. In the case of the Pharisee he remained in his
sins, while the Tax Collector went home with
his relationship with God restored. The thought of
the Tax
Collector in the parable immediately reminds us that if we wish to be
made right with God and to live in his friendship then we just must
pray. Because of his prayer he was restored to life in God. Prayer is
absolutely essential in any genuinely religious life and in any
friendship with God. If there is little genuine spirit of prayer in our
life then our relationship with God will be weak. If there is no
prayer, there will be no life with God. St Alphonsus Ligouri writes
that a person who does not pray is endangering his eternal salvation.
By implication, if we wish to grow in holiness and in the love of God,
then we must cultivate a strong life of prayer. Our Lord says elsewhere
in the Gospels that we are to pray always and never to lose heart. He
tells us to persevere in our prayer with the knowledge that if we ask
we shall receive and if we knock we shall have the door opened to
us. So then, any member of Christ’s faithful should be profoundly
convinced of the overriding importance of a strong daily life of
prayer, lived out according to the Church’s classic guidelines. But
now, what further light does our Gospel passage today cast on the
prayer that
ought be rising from our hearts daily before God? The key to it
lies in what St Luke says is our Lord’s intended audience. He told his
parable “to those who were convinced of their own righteousness
and despised everyone else.” The Pharisee of the story embodies the one
who thinks himself good and even holy and who looks down on others,
perhaps even unconsciously. The Tax Collector embodies the one who
knows he is a sinner and who looks up to others as better than himself.
The truest and best prayer is humble and conscious of personal sin.
This point is
especially relevant to our own day. I say this because it
speaks about the necessity of a sense of personal sinfulness if our
prayer is ever going to open us to the friendship of God. Time and
again the Church, including the Popes of our time, has said that one
of our most serious deficiencies is the lack of a sense of sin. We are
prone to think that sin does not matter much and that we are not very
sinful anyway. This tendency in our thought is largely unconscious
because we do not advert much to sin anyway. We are conscious of
physical health and its requirements, and we have many helps to keep a
good check on our physical condition. We have no doubt about the
reality of various kinds of physical and mental illness, but when it
comes to spiritual illness — indifference to God and serious neglect of
his commandments — then on that we are strangely blind. Sin is quietly
deemed to be a
non-event. I am sure this is largely a product of the practical (not
to speak of theoretical) atheism or agnosticism of vast numbers of
people in our
age. Our Western culture is one that relegates God and his declared
commandments to the realm of subjective personal opinion, and being
thus categorized is refused any place in the public discussion of
issues pertaining to man’s objective good. Publicly God is kept out of
sight because it is assumed that he cannot be regarded as a hard fact.
Religion is taken to be useful because religious opinions can support
morality and peace of mind (though not necessarily), but beyond that
God is seen to be little more than a private phantom. The result of
this is that sin becomes a mere personal interpretation of wrongdoing.
Consider the fictional characters and heroes of popular culture. Do
they manifest a sense of personal sin? No, even though they can have a
sense of personal wrongdoing. All this is to say that we who are
children of our culture, a culture that has so many strengths, can be
weak in the sense of personal sin that should characterize our prayer,
as Christ makes clear in his parable today.
If this is the case
our prayer will not make us right with God nor
restore us to his friendship. Let us then take to heart our Lord’s
parable and recognize that if we are not on guard then we of our age,
an age
characteristically deficient in the sense of sin because deficient in
our sense of God, can be rather like the Pharisee in our prayer. Let us
rather make constant use of the prayer of the Tax Collector and pray
repeatedly to God asking his pardon for our sins and failings. O God,
be merciful to me a sinner! This is an admirable prayer and if it is
prayed sincerely it will bring us into God’s pardon and friendship.
(E.J.Tyler)
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If we are generous in voluntary atonement Jesus will fill us with
grace
to love the trials he sends us.
(The Way,
no.221)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is it possible to pray always?
Praying is always possible because the time of the Christian is the
time of the risen Christ who remains “with us always” (Matthew 28:20).
Prayer and Christian life are therefore inseparable: “It is possible to
offer frequent and fervent prayer
even at the market place or strolling alone. It is possible also in
your place of business, while buying or selling, or even while
cooking.” (Saint John Chrysostom) (CCC 2742-2745,
2757)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.576)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Do not abandon me,
Lord. My God, do not go away from me.
Hurry
to help me, Lord, my Saviour.
God of power and mercy,
only with your help can we offer you fitting service and praise.
May we live
the faith we profess and trust your promise of eternal life.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(November 4) Saint
Charles Boromeo, bishop (1538-1584)
Saint Charles Borromeo was born in 1538 in the castle of Arona on the
borders of Lake Major, fourteen miles from Milan. He was the son of
Count Gilbert Borromeo, a descendant of one of the most ancient
families of Lombardy, very famous for its great men. The Count was
known for his almsgiving and his rigorous fasts; it was his custom
never to eat a meal without first giving alms. The Countess, Charles’
mother, was also 
exceptionally
virtuous. Their family was composed of two sons and four daughters, all
of whom manifested in their lives the splendor of their Christian
heritage. Their maternal uncle, John Angelus of Medici, became Pope
Pius IV. Charles was clearly destined for the ecclesiastical vocation;
all his preferences in study made it clear. When he was twelve years
old, a paternal uncle willed to him an abbey in commendam; and the
child constantly reminded his father that this revenue was the
patrimony of the poor. His father wept for joy, seeing his son’s
solicitude for the just application of his trust. Count Gilbert died
when Charles was twenty years old, and he was obliged to come home from
Pavia where he had been studying law; he returned there, however, to
complete his doctorate at the university after settling his affairs.
One year later, when his maternal uncle became Pope Pius IV, he created
Charles cardinal, and after another year nominated him Archbishop of
Milan. The Pontiff detained him in Rome, however, seeing his extensive
capacities and adding to these offices other administrative duties
which ordinarily require the prudence of mature years. No one was
disappointed in his services, despite the fact he was maintaining
delicate papal relations with other nations, as protector of Portugal
and the Low Countries, and was at the head of the Knights of Malta, the
Orders of Carmel and Saint Francis, among other duties.
When the Council of Trent (1545-1563) was nearing
its conclusion, Saint Charles, who had participated with authority in
many of its twenty-five sessions, desired to leave Rome to attend to
his diocese of Milan, a duty which his vicar general had carried out
until that time. The urgency of the situation there persuaded the Pope
to consent regretfully to his departure. Saint Charles intended to put
into execution the reforming decrees of the Council, create seminaries
and schools and in general restore discipline in the Church of Milan.
As Archbishop of Milan he enforced the observance of the decrees, and
thoroughly restored the discipline of his see. Criticism hounded him
there, but left him unmoved; he kept with him in his episcopal
household of about one hundred persons, a certain priest who delighted
in finding fault with whatever he did; he treated him with great
consideration, and in his will left him a pension for life. He was very
severe with himself, eating only once a day, and limiting himself often
to bread and water. When someone suggested he should have a garden at
Milan to get some fresh air, he replied that the Holy Scriptures should
be the garden of a bishop.
The sermons of Saint Charles produced great fruits
among all ranks of the people. When young he had manifested a speech
defect with a tendency to speak too fast, but he overcame these
handicaps with many efforts. A man who admired him said that he always
forgot the orator himself when he preached, so transported was he by
the great truths he heard explained, and the longest sermons of Saint
Charles seemed short to him. Everywhere the holy Archbishop established
schools of Christian doctrine, numbering in all seven hundred and
forty, in which over three thousand catechists were employed, presiding
over forty thousand students.
Once Saint Charles heard a cardinal who was a bishop
of a small diocese say that his diocese was too small to require his
constant residence there, as canon law required; Saint Charles said to
him with force that the price of one soul is such as to merit the
residence and entire time of the greatest of men. He himself visited
the most remote corners of his diocese, traveling in mountainous
regions amid the greatest dangers, which he regarded as nothing
unusual, and unworthy of mention. Inflexible in maintaining discipline,
to his flock he was a most tender father. He would sit by the roadside
to teach a poor man the Pater and Ave. During the great plague which
broke out in Milan, which he had foretold as a chastisement for the
disorders of the Carnival, he refused to leave, asking those who
remonstrated with him if it were not more perfect to remain with one’s
flock than to abandon them in need, and adding that a bishop is obliged
to choose what is most perfect. He was ever at the side of the sick and
dying. He stripped his palace of literally everything to aid those who
had lost their support in their fathers and spouses, even giving away
his straw mattress. As he lived, so he died, having governed his church
for twenty-four years and eight months. To the heroic sanctity of this
faithful copy of the Good Shepherd, many miracles came to testify,
through his relics and his intercession. In 1610 he was canonized by
Pope Paul
V.
(magnificat.ca)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: Wisdom
11:22-12:2; Psalm 145:1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13, 14; 2 Thessalonians
1:11-2:2; Luke 19:1-10
At that time, Jesus
came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there
named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man,
was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of
the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a
sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way.
When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, "Zacchaeus, come
down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." And he came down
quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began
to grumble, saying, "He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner." But
Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Behold, half of my
possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted
anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over." And Jesus said
to him, "Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is
a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to
save what was lost." (Luke 19:1-10)
One of the notable
phenomena of world culture during the last few centuries is the
emergence in literature of the novel. The play has had a long history
as has poetry, but the novel is a relatively recent literary form.
There are a great variety of basic themes in the novel, but one which I
do not think is sufficiently represented or explored by novelists is
that of repentance. Wrongdoing and its effects are a recurrent theme
even in the most popular literature, but not, it seems to me,
repentance. I wonder if it has even had enough place in the much
longer traditions of epic poetry and the play — let us say, in tragedy.
Taking the novel, consider Joseph Conrad’s Under
Western Eyes
and in particular the tragic figure of Razumov. It is a pity, I think,
that Conrad does not develop more the possibility of repentance in
Razumov’s fateful course. Many other novels could be mentioned as
examples of my point. Well, whatever of literature, repentance could be
regarded as one of the most significant achievements in a human life. I
am not referring just to apologies, and public apologies at that, which
can be mere strategic or political footwork to avoid impossible
confrontations. But even apologies such as these, useful as they are in
human relations, suggest the power and the benefit of repentance
provided it is sincere. The fact is, though, that a person can go right
through life never sincerely and from the heart repenting of the wrong
things he has done. It is this difficulty and perhaps rarity of
repentance that, I would observe in passing, may account for what I
perceive to be its relative absence in literature. Sincere repentance
is a fundamental act of the heart, one that has a profound and
wholesome effect on a person’s life, and one that brings the likelihood
of future blessings. But it is difficult to attain and it is very easy
continually to put it off. The capacity to repent is a virtue to be
prayed for and one that should be practised repeatedly throughout life.
It is a marvellous habit to acquire. We ought recognize our lack of a
spirit of repentance and, praying for the grace to grow in it, resolve
to repent often.
The greatest
benefit that will come to a person who is able to repent not only of
his wrongdoings in society but of his sins before God is that of
forgiveness. God forgives the person who repents of his sins. There are
so many sins, sins of thought, sins of word and sins of deed that over
the years have accumulated in each person’s life. The Book of
Revelation in the New Testament speaks of the books being opened at our
Judgment before God, and of the record of all our deeds having being
set down in those books. It is all recorded, which is to say that God
remembers all. Now, what a benefit to
have those sins wiped away! This can happen but there is a necessary
condition and it is that we sincerely repent of those sins. The only
time given to us for this repentance is during this life. We should aim
to repent of each and all of our sins so as to be eligible for the
blessing of God’s forgiveness of each and all of them. Now is the time,
and if our life passes without our having sincerely repented and gone
to Christ for his forgiveness then it will all be over for us. This
sincere repentance is not easy and the general human experience of its
difficulty shows that we need the grace of God to achieve it. The
Gospels present us with repeated calls to repent and the prophets
culminating in our Lord himself made it a central theme of their
preaching. Very importantly we have there plenty of examples of persons
who refused to repent and, by contrast, those who readily did so. Our
Gospel passage
today (Luke 19:1-10) places us in a beautiful
and inspiring scene of repentance. Zacchaeus was a wealthy tax
collector, indeed a chief tax collector and a wealthy man. The
implication is that his position and wealth had involved extortion and
injustice and his life was obviously burdened with his many sins and
wrongdoing. But there was another story to his troubled heart and it
was shown in his running ahead to climb the tree to see Jesus who was
to pass that way. He obviously wanted God but he needed the grace to
repent and to break free of his sinful attachments. That breakthrough
came with his meeting with Jesus who stopped, looked up and with a
smile greeted Zacchaeus and invited himself to Zacchaeus’s home. His
meeting with Jesus was the moment of grace.
We on our part meet
the living Jesus especially in the ministry and the
Sacraments of the Church of which Christ is the Head. Let us understand
that the door to the forgiveness of sins is repentance. Let us ask
Christ all through our life for the grace to repent not once but daily,
and with this repentance to receive the grace of the forgiveness of our
sins. The
meeting of Christ and Zacchaeus in our Gospel today has much to teach
us.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.976-983
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Have a good time to-night', they said, as usual. And the comment
of a soul very close to God was, 'What a limited wish!'
(The Way,
no.228)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How does the Church pray to Mary?
Above all with the Hail Mary, the prayer with which the Church asks the
intercession of the Virgin. Other Marian prayers are the Rosary, the
Akathistos hymn, the Paraclesis, and the hymns and canticles of diverse
Christian traditions. (CCC 2676-2678, 2682)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.563)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Let my prayer come
before you, Lord; Listen, and answer me.
God
of power and mercy, protect us from all harm.
Give us freedom of spirit and
health of mind and body to do your work on earth.
We ask
this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy
Spirit, one God.
(November 11) St. Martin of Tours (316?-397)
A conscientious objector who wanted to be a monk; a monk who was
manoeuvred into being a bishop; a bishop who fought paganism as well as
pleaded for mercy to heretics—such was Martin of Tours, one of the most
popular of saints and one of the first not to be a martyr. He was born
of pagan parents in what is now Hungary and was raised in Italy. The
son of a veteran, he was forced to serve in the army against his will
at the age of 15. He became a Christian catechumen and was baptized at
18. It was said that he lived more like a monk than a soldier. At 23 he
refused a war bounty from the emperor with the words, "I have served
you as a soldier; now let me serve Christ. Give the bounty to those who
are going to fight. But I am a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful
for me to fight." After great difficulties, he was discharged and went
to be a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers. He was ordained an exorcist and
worked with great zeal against the Arians. He became a monk, living
first at Milan and later on a small island. When Hilary was restored to
his see after exile, Martin returned to France and established what may
have been the first French monastery near Poitiers. He lived there for
10 years, forming his disciples and preaching throughout the
countryside. The people of Tours demanded that he become their bishop.
He was drawn to that city by a ruse—the need of a sick person—and was
brought to the church, where he reluctantly allowed himself to be
consecrated bishop. Some of the consecrating bishops thought his
rumpled appearance and unkempt hair indicated that he was not dignified
enough for the office. Along with St. Ambrose, Martin rejected Bishop
Ithacius’s principle of putting heretics to death—as well as the
intrusion of the emperor into such matters. He prevailed upon the
emperor to spare the life of the heretic Priscillian. For his efforts,
Martin was accused of the same heresy, and Priscillian was executed
after all. Martin then pleaded for a cessation of the persecution of
Priscillian’s followers in Spain. He still felt he could cooperate with
Ithacius in other areas, but afterwards his conscience troubled him
about this decision. As death approached, his followers begged him not
to leave them. He prayed, "Lord, if your people still need me, I do not
refuse the work. Your will be
done."
(AmericanCatholic.org)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; Psalm 17:1, 5-6, 8, 15; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a
resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying,
"Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone's brother dies leaving a wife
but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants
for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a
woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her,
and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died.
Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven
had been married to her." Jesus said to them, "The children of this age
marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the
coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are
given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels;
and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will
rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage
about the bush, when he called out 'Lord, ' the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of
the living, for to him all are alive." (Luke
20:27-38)
There are a few
religious doctrines which have pervaded the consciousness of much of
the world. Apart from the doctrine of one only God, there is also the
doctrine of a divine judgment on man issuing in an eternity of either
heaven or hell. Now, while it is true that various religious traditions
have contributed to the widespread familiarity with and even acceptance
of what we might call these Last Things that face man, it is surely
clear that the single most important source of these religious
doctrines is Jesus Christ and the influence through two millennia of
the Catholic Church which he founded. Throughout the Gospels our Lord
refers to the divine judgment on each man and on the whole human race.
All should live in such a way as to be ready for that judgment. The
thought of the judgment of God is perhaps the most important prompt for
religion in a person’s life. He looks to the end of life whenever that might be and he asks, what then? Christ has told him that — using the imagery of Scripture
— the books will then be opened and
there will be a judgment on his thoughts, words and deeds. Now, one of
the most wonderful revelations of Christ is that of the resurrection
from the dead. As we state in the Creed, we believe in the forgiveness
of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. While the
doctrine of the resurrection from the dead can be shown to have been
revealed in the Old Testament, it was not sufficiently clear to silence
dissent. In our Gospel today we are told that some Sadducees, those who
“deny that there is a resurrection”, came forward and put a puzzle to
Jesus which, they thought, would vindicate their denial that there is a
resurrection. They misread the Scriptures and thought little of the
power of God. Our Lord answered immediately and sovereignly their
difficulty by affirming that there is indeed a resurrection from the
dead, and that it is for those judged worthy. So there is a judgment,
and for those who pass that test, there is a rising to eternal life.
All through human
life and society there is the incentive of reward for work well done. A
person receives a bonus for a year’s good work. A person’s curriculum
vitae records his good work and that is his passbook to better
prospects in the future. A student works hard to do well in his exams
and so have the reward of better career prospects. God offers immense
rewards too. He means his revelation of the fact of the resurrection in
the body to eternal life to be a grand incentive to live a good and
holy life filled with persevering and loving service of God and
neighbour. Life is short and eternity is long. Our Lord has revealed
and the Church has taught in her formal teaching that for those judged
worthy “to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the
dead” there will be an eternity of life in the company of God himself,
face to face in the direct vision of him. The very thought of eternity
is difficult to imagine, except by constantly denying a limit to
ongoing time. Those who are “judged worthy” will be engulfed in a
limitless sea of beauty and joy which is the living God. This vast
universe with its unknown and unattained limits is but a pale
reflection of the limitless being of the loving and holy God. Heaven
will be God’s eternal embrace of each of us, holding us to himself in
an unimaginable smile of fatherly love that will never cease to fill us
with overflowing joy, and in him we shall live with all those who are
likewise in him. Every tear will forever be wiped away. How brief will
life appear to have been for those enjoying the bliss of heaven, how
paltry its pleasures and sorrows and what a waste to have ignored one’s
God-given duties. Take any point of time in the future — say, a million
years to come — and that point will be still but the beginning of an
eternity to come. Every single human being will be part of this
eternity planned by God for those who have risen to eternal life.
The all-important
project of life is so to live as to be judged worthy of the
resurrection of the dead in the body, and not to be cast out into the
eternal darkness of hell. Christ has revealed this to be the great and
grand future of man and the world. Each of us stands at the crossroads
and we know the direction to take. Let us not ignore Christ’s
revelation. Rather, let us take our stand with him and every day live
with him so as to be able to die with him and then rise with him.
(E.J.Tyler)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Examination of conscience: a daily task. Book-keeping is never
neglected by anyone in business.
And is there any business worth more than the business of eternal life?
(The Way, no.235)
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What is meditation?
Meditation is a prayerful reflection that begins above all in the Word
of God in the Bible. Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion
and desire in order to deepen our faith, convert our heart and fortify
our will to follow Christ. It is a first step toward the union of love
with our Lord. (CCC 2705-2708, 2723)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.570)
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Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
The Lord says, my plans
for you are peace and not disaster;
when
you call to me, I will listen to you, and I will bring you back to the
place from which I exiled you.
Father of
all that is good, keep us faithful in serving you, for to serve you is our
lasting joy.
We ask this through
our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(November 18) Dedication of St. Peter and Paul
St. Peter’s
is probably the most famous church in Christendom. Massive in
scale and a veritable museum of art and architecture, it began on a much
humbler scale. Vatican Hill was a simple cemetery where believers gathered
at St. Peter’s tomb to pray. In 319 Constantine built on the site a basilica
that stood for more than a thousand years until, despite numerous
restorations, it threatened to collapse. In 1506 Pope Julius II ordered it
razed and reconstructed, but the new basilica was not completed and
dedicated for more than two centuries.
St. Paul’s Outside the Walls stands near the Abaazia delle Tre Fontane,
where St. Paul is believed to have been beheaded. The largest church in Rome
until St. Peter’s was rebuilt, the basilica also rises over the traditional
site of its namesake’s grave. The most recent edifice was constructed after
a fire in 1823. The first basilica was also Constantine’s doing.
Constantine’s building projects enticed the first of a centuries-long parade
of pilgrims to Rome. From the time the basilicas were first built until the
empire crumbled under “barbarian” invasions, the two churches, although
miles apart, were linked by a roofed colonnade of marble columns.
Peter, the rough fisherman whom Jesus named the rock on which the Church is
built, and the educated Paul, reformed persecutor of Christians, Roman
citizen and missionary to the Gentiles, are the original odd couple. The
major similarity in their faith-journeys is the journey’s end: Both,
according to tradition, died a martyr’s death in Rome—Peter on a cross and
Paul beneath the sword. Their combined gifts shaped the early Church and
believers have prayed at their tombs from the earliest days. “It is
extraordinarily interesting that Roman pilgrimage began at an…early time.
Pilgrims did not wait for the Peace of the Church [Constantine’s edict of
toleration] before they visited the tombs of the Apostles. They went to Rome
a century before there were any public churches and when the Church was
confined to the tituli [private homes] and the catacombs. The two great
pilgrimage sites were exactly as today—the tombs, or memorials, of St. Peter
upon the Vatican Hill and the tomb of St. Paul off the Ostian Way” (H.V.
Morton, This Is Rome). (AmericanCatholic.org)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Malachi 3:19-20a; Psalm 98:5-6, 7-8, 9; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12;
Luke 21:5-19
Some were saying of the temple that it was adorned with goodly stones
and gifts, and he said:
"These things which you see, the days will come in which there shall not be
left a stone upon a stone that shall not be thrown down." And they asked him:
"Master, when shall these things be, and what will be the sign when
they will begin to happen?" He said, "Take heed you be not seduced;
for many will come in my name, saying, I am he; and the time is at hand. Do
not go after them. And when you hear of wars and seditions,
be not terrified. These things must first come to pass; but the end is not
yet now." Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various
places, and pestilences, and famines, and terrors from heaven; and there
will be great signs. But before all these things, they will lay their hands
upon you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into
prisons, dragging you before kings and governors, for my name's sake. And
this will happen to you for the purposes of testimony. Lay it up therefore into your hearts,
not to meditate before how to answer. For I will give you a mouth and
wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to resist and gainsay.
And you will be betrayed by your parents and brethren, and kinsmen and
friends; and some of you they will put to death. And you will be hated by
all men for my name's sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. In
your endurance you will possess your souls. (Luke 21:5-19)
I remember attending a talk given many years ago by the chief editor of a
leading Sydney newspaper, and he made the remark that the commodity that
newspapers sell is the news. News is interesting, it excites and fills
people’s minds, and so is worthy of purchase. As we think of the news of
nations warring or in
difficulties (and most of the news is about
difficulties and causes of anxiety) we are led to think of the course of
history. Nations rise and have their span of influence and then gradually or
suddenly decline. There are achievements and failures, joys and sorrows,
wars and times of relative peace. A person who takes an interest in the
course of history may well ask himself what is the meaning of it. What is
basically happening in history and is there a pattern? Is the course of
history pointing to anything that can be prepared for? What is happening in
our world now, and where is it heading? These are some of the questions that
can occur to a person who is observing the affairs of men. I would suggest
that it is very difficult to answer these questions just from ordinary
rational reflection. The best way to view the course of history is to
determine first the fundamental vantage point to be adopted. If you want to
gain a good view of things you select a very good vantage point. You go up a
particular hill or mountain and take your stand from there and from that
perspective you look at the terrain. So too in human affairs. Now, our best
vantage point is that of God and his revelation, which is to say that of
Christ. How did Christ view human history? Our Gospel passage today
(Luke 21:5-19)suggests
to us something of his divine vantage point. Many of the great and beautiful
things made by human hands, worthy as they are, will not last. The Temple
may be taken as an instance of this. “While some people were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus
said, ‘All that you see here– the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down’."
What then is the enduring thing in human history? It is Jesus Christ, the
same yesterday, today and forever. He is the one on whom each of us can base
our lives with utter security and he is the hope of the world — not this or
that power, country or theory. It is he to whom we ought bear witness and to
whom we ought dedicate our energies with full love and loyalty. “Then they
asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when
all these things are about to happen?’ He answered, ‘See that you not be
deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he,’ and 'The time
has come.’ Do not follow them!” He is worth living for, suffering for and
dying for. It is to him that we ought bear witness and the effects of that
witness will be truly enduring. If we want to spend our lives in ways that
have enduring value, then it is for Christ that we ought spend them. No
matter what it may cost, it will be worth it. In respect to this our Lord
goes on to say, “I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your
adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute. You will even be handed
over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of
you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on
your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your
lives." (Luke 21:5-19). The centrepiece of human history is the person of
Jesus Christ, and the purpose of human history is that he be accepted as the
Lord. This is the meaning of human history, and the more the nations ignore
or refuse the lordship of Jesus Christ then the more does history sink into
futility and meaninglessness. The more Jesus Christ is acclaimed as Lord,
the more does human history and the concourse of mankind attain its true
end. It is to this that Christ’s faithful must every day bear witness by
word and deed, by holy lives lived out in loving acknowledgement that Christ
is Lord, and that his teaching is the guide of all of human life.
There is one great future event that is coming. That is one thing we do know
amid all the uncertainties of human history. It is that Christ will come
again. He will come again to us individually at our death and he will come
again at the very end of human history to judge the living and the dead. We
each of us and all of us together are called so to live as to be ready for
his coming. Let us make sure that every day counts in this waiting. We must
make sure that when the master comes he finds us waiting and fully ready.
(E.J.Tyler)
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What I owe to God as a Christian! My failure to respond to God's grace, in
the face of that debt, has made me weep with sorrow; with Love-sorrow. Mea
culpa!
It is good that you acknowledge your debts; but don't forget how they are
paid: with tears... and with deeds.
(The Way, no.242)
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What is the prayer of the Hour of Jesus?
It is called the priestly prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper. Jesus, the
High Priest of the New Covenant, addresses it to his Father when the hour of
his sacrifice, the hour of his “passing over” to him is approaching. (CCC
2604, 2746-2751, 2758)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.577)
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The Solemnity of Christ the King C
(Thirty-fourth Sunday Ordinary Time C)
Prayers this week:
The Lamb who was slain
is worthy to receive strength and divinity, wisdom and power and honour: to him
be glory and power for ever.
Almighty and
merciful God, you break the power of evil and make all things new in your Son
Jesus Christ, the King of the universe. May all in heaven and on earth acclaim
your glory and never cease to praise you.
We ask this through
our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(November 25) St. Columban (543?-615)
Columban was the greatest of the Irish missionaries who worked on the European
continent. As a young man he was greatly tormented by temptations of the flesh,
and sought the advice of a religious woman who had lived a hermit’s life for
years. He saw in her answer a call to leave the world. He went first to a monk
on an island in Lough Erne, then to the great monastic seat of learning at
Bangor. After many years of seclusion and prayer, he travelled to Gaul with 12
companion missionaries. They won wide respect for the rigour of their
discipline, their preaching, and their commitment to charity and religious life
in a time characterized by clerical slackness and civil strife. Columban
established several monasteries in Europe which became centers of religion and
culture. Like all saints, he met opposition. Ultimately he had to appeal to the
pope against complaints of Frankish bishops, for vindication of his orthodoxy
and approval of Irish customs. He reproved the king for his licentious life,
insisting that he marry. Since this threatened the power of the queen mother,
Columban was ordered deported back to Ireland. His ship ran aground in a storm,
and he continued his work in Europe, ultimately arriving in Italy, where he
found favour with the king of the Lombards. In his last years he established the
famous monastery of Bobbio, where he died. His writings include a treatise on
penance and against Arianism, sermons, poetry and his monastic rule.
Now that public sexual license is approaching the extreme, we need the Church's
jolting memory of a young man as concerned about chastity as Columban. And now
that the comfort-captured Western world stands in tragic contrast to starving
millions, we need the challenge to austerity and discipline of a group of Irish
monks. They were too strict, we say; they went too far. How far shall we go?
Writing to the pope about a doctrinal controversy in Lombardy, Columban said:
“We Irish, living in the farthest parts of the earth, are followers of St. Peter
and St. Paul and of the disciples who wrote down the sacred canon under the Holy
Spirit. We accept nothing outside this evangelical and apostolic teaching.... I
confess I am grieved by the bad repute of the chair of St. Peter in this
country.... Though Rome is great and known afar, she is great and honoured with
us only because of this chair.... Look after the peace of the Church, stand
between your sheep and the wolves.” (AmericanCatholic.org)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: 2 Samuel 5:1-3; Psalm 122:1-5; Colossians 1:12-20; Luke
23:35-43
And the people stood watching and the rulers with them derided him,
saying: He saved others; let him save himself, if he is Christ, the chosen one
of God. And the soldiers also mocked him and approached him offering him
vinegar, saying: If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also
an inscription above him written in Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE
KING OF THE JEWS. And one of those robbers who were hanging there as well
insulted him, saying: If you are the Christ, save yourself and us. But the other
rebuked him, saying: Do you not God, seeing you are under the same condemnation?
And we are justly sentenced, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but
this man has done no evil. And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when you come
into your kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to you, this day you will
be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:35-43)
If one had to classify the various founders of the great religions, I suppose
most would place them in the class of teachers. They taught a great doctrine and
this doctrine gained adherents. Zoroaster taught his doctrine, as did Buddha,
Confucius and Mahomet. Most would probably say the same of Jesus Christ. He was
a great religious teacher. Those who accept the historicity of the Gospels would
add that he was a
great miracle worker which in their minds would mark him off
from the other great founders of religions. Mahomet did not work miracles, nor
did Buddha, but Christ worked spectacular miracles. In view of his exalted
religious teaching and the accompanying miracles, and speaking more within the
context of the Old Testament, one would speak of him as a prophet rather than
simply as a teacher. He was a great prophet, indeed he was the greatest and the
one who brought the fullness of divine revelation to man. He was described as a
prophet by very many of his contemporaries, although this title was denied him
by his enemies because of the newness of his doctrine. Although a Christian
would deny the legitimacy of their doing so, some followers of other religions
have used the same term prophet to designate the founders of their religions. A
Muslim refers to Mahomet as the Prophet, and I could imagine a Zoroastrian
perhaps referring to the founder of his religion as a prophet. The Christian
firmly restricts the term prophet and allows it to be used only of those
prophets authenticated as such in the revealed religion recorded in the Old and
New Testaments. Christ is the greatest Prophet of God. But Christ is more than
the Prophet who taught man God’s full and final revelation. He is not only
mankind’s supreme religious teacher. He is also a lord with authority to rule.
He is, indeed, the Lord of lords and the King of kings to whom all authority in
heaven and on earth has been given. Islam chooses to apply the term prophet to
Mahomet, but it does not designate him as their king and lord. But the Christian
religion proclaims Christ to be the Lord and King, the ruler of heaven and
earth, the one seated at the right hand of the Father. He is, as we commonly
express it, our Lord, our risen and living Lord, the Lord of the ages both now
and forever.
That is to say, one of the distinctive features of the Christian religion is
that Christ is not regarded simply as the supreme Teacher or Prophet, but as the
object of one’s love, adoration and service. Buddha is not served as a living,
unseen king. Nor is Mahomet. The Christian, however, serves and acknowledges
Christ as King. He is the king and the lord of our heart and our life, and the
object of our service all our days and in all situations. The Emperor is not
God, but Christ is indeed God and therefore he is the unseen ruler of the kings
of the earth. Of course, the Christian does not think of the lordship of Christ
in secular and temporal terms. Christ is not a king as this world understands
the term: a military, political or economic king. When Pilate asked Christ if he
were a king, Jesus said, it is you who call me that. He then continued, yes, I
am a king, but my kingship is not of this world. If it were, temporal and
military means would be employed by my followers to prevent me from falling into
the hands of my enemies and to enforce my rule. Christ’s power and influence
come from bearing witness to the truth of God. “For this was I born,” he told
Pilate, “to bear witness to the truth, and those who are of the truth listen to
my voice.” He is the king and the lord of the world, but his dominion is
extended by the recognition by all that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Furthermore, his reign was inaugurated not by force and a victory as this world
understands it, but by the Cross. The Son of Man had to suffer, he repeatedly
told his disciples, in order to enter into his glory. It was by his obedient
death on behalf of sinful man that he entered into and took possession of his
kingdom. As we heard in the Gospel (Luke 23:35-43),
while Christ hung upon the cross the criminal who had defended him against the
abuse of the other criminal said to him, "Jesus, remember me when you come into
your kingdom." Jesus turned to him and said, "I tell you, this day you will be
with me in Paradise." On the cross he was entering his kingdom. Of this kingdom
there is no end. Its entry is by way of the Cross. On one occasion the mother of
the sons of Zebedee came to him with her two sons and asked him a favour. It was
that her two sons be at his right and his left in his kingdom. He said, can you
drink the cup I am to drink?
Christ is our prophet, our high priest and victim, and he is also our Lord. We
serve him daily as our King. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords and the
Christian serves him daily and every moment of every day in everything he does.
His ambition is to serve him and give to him all glory. The living Jesus is the
centre and object of all human activity and in this lies the salvation of man
and the world.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Make few resolutions. Make them definite. — And fulfil them with the help of
God.
(The Way, no.249)
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Why do we say “our” Father?
“Our” expresses a totally new relationship with God. When we pray to the Father,
we adore and glorify him with the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Christ we are
“his” people and he is “our” God now and for eternity. In fact, we also say
“our” Father because the Church of Christ is the communion of a multitude of
brothers and sisters who have but “one heart and mind” (Acts 4:32). (CCC
2786-2790, 2801)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.584)
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