Morning Offering:
O Jesus, through the most pure heart of Mary, I offer you all the
prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions
of your divine heart, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass. I
offer them especially for the Holy
Father's intentions:
Pope Benedict
XVI'sgeneral prayer intention
for the month of June
2007: "That the
Lord may protect sailors and all those involved in maritime activities."
Pope Benedict
XVI'smissionary prayer
intention for June 2007:
"That the Church in North Africa may bear
witness, with its
presence and its action, to God's love for every individual and all
peoples."
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(June 1) Saint
Justin, martyr. Born of a pagan family in Nablus
in Samaria at the beginning of the second century. He was a philosopher
and was a passionate searcher for the truth, which he found in Christ.
On his conversion to the faith he wrote in defence of the Christian
Faith, though the only works now extant are his two Apologies and his
Dialogue addressed to Trypho. He opened a school in Rome and he took
part in public disputations. He suffered a martyr’s death with his
companions during the time of Marcus Aurelius, about the year 165.
(Saints)
Let us also think of
Saint Whyte This early British saint gave her name to, and
is buried at Whitechurch Canonicorum, in Dorset (England). Her modest
shrine, together with that of Edward the Confessor, are the only two to
survive intact in England to this day. Very little is known about her.
Some historians think she was a West Saxon, others say she may have
been the Welsh saint Gwen, whose relics were given by St Athelstan to
this church. William Worcestre and John Gerard both mention her relics.
St Thomas More referred to the custom of offering cakes or cheese on
her feast day. In 1990 her leaden coffin was opened. It was inscribed:
Hic requiescunt reliquie Sancte Wite, and contained the bones of a
small woman about 40 years old.
click
on arrow for video
Scripture today:
Sirach 44:1,
9-13; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and
9b; Mark 11:11-26
Jesus entered
Jerusalem and went into the temple area. He looked around
at everything and, since it was already late, went out to Bethany with
the Twelve. The next day as they were leaving Bethany he was hungry.
Seeing from a distance a fig tree in leaf, he went over to see if he
could find anything on it. When he reached it he found nothing but
leaves; it was not the time for figs. And he said to it in reply, “May
no one ever eat of your fruit again!”
And his disciples heard it. They came to Jerusalem, and on entering the
temple area he began to
drive out those selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of
the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. He
did not permit anyone to carry anything through the temple area. Then
he taught them saying, “Is it not written: My house shall be called a
house of prayer for all peoples? But you have made it a den of
thieves.” The chief priests and the
scribes came to hear of it and were seeking a way to put him to death,
yet they feared him because the whole crowd was astonished at his
teaching. When evening came, they went out of the city. Early in the
morning, as they were walking along, they saw the fig tree withered to
its roots. Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree
that you cursed has withered.” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have faith
in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted
up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but
believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.
Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you
will receive it and it shall be yours. When you stand to pray, forgive
anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father
may in turn forgive you your transgressions.” (Mark 11:11-26)
There is, of
course, nothing more fundamental in religion than prayer.
We could put it more plainly by saying that there is nothing more
fundamental in life than prayer. Man is a rational animal, yes, but in
our current intellectual climate a definition such as this can favour a
view of life that leaves
out God. Any militant atheist (such as the
contemporary Oxford campaigner for atheism, Richard Dawkins) would
happily accept that definition of man because usually the modern
atheist flaunts what he regards as his scientific rationality. But
prayer and religion? He would have none of it and would regard prayer
as an indulgence that diminishes a man’s rationality and so also his
humanity. Prayer is a crutch, a prop, a flight from a hands-on
involvement with life and the world. Such is the contemporary blindness
of many, and it is sadly fuelled by the irrationality of many forms of
religion. I would favour a definition of man which while placing at the
centre his rationality also includes his capacity for religion and,
more precisely, for prayer. Just as no mere animal reasons properly so
called, so too no mere animal prays. If for good philosophical reasons
we are to place man in the category of animal, then let us include
among his distinguishing characteristics not only his capacity to
reason but also his capacity to pray. Observe the discussions among
anthropologists and historians of culture. The religions of the
societies they investigate are at the centre of their deliberations.
Rituals, myths and temples are the stuff of their publications and
congresses. Where man has been, there religion has showed its lively
face. The voice of mankind would seem to suggest that if the life of
the reason is central to our humanity, so too is the life of prayer and
religion.
Well then, what
does Christ the redeemer of man say to us about prayer?
We cannot take a single reference from the Gospels and consider it as
providing a complete account of the teaching of revelation on prayer.
But every reference is precious and, in fact, often surprising.
Consider our Gospel passage for today (Mark 11:11-26). Our Lord enters
Jerusalem and
goes into the Temple area — and is obviously far from pleased. He
leaves and returns the next day after having left a potent sign in his
curse of the fig tree. He returns to cleanse the Temple forcibly of all
that is not prayer and reverence for God. Christ is insisting with
vigour and unyielding insistence on the profound reverence which man
ought manifest publicly to God his Father. God our Father is a public
fact and temples and churches attest to it. But all too often the
reverence due to him in and out of our churches is lamentably lacking.
We talk, we look around, we do many things on entering and passing our
time there that are tantamount to irreverence and neglect of the Divine
Presence therein. In every Catholic church where there is the
Tabernacle, the great God abides. There God the Son made man and risen
from the dead dwells, and where he is present the Father and the Holy
Spirit abide also. How great ought be our reverence and how often ought
we advert in a form of spiritual communion to the real presence of God
there! But there is this too: not only is Christ ever present in the
Blessed Sacrament, but he and the Father and the Holy Spirit dwell
within the soul of the baptized person in the state of grace. If we are
in the friendship of God by grace, the Holy Trinity dwells within. How
great ought be our reverence and how genuine our life of prayer! As we
think of Christ cleansing the Temple, let us resolve to stamp our life
with prayer, and to make it prayer with genuine reverence filled with
the thought of God.
Let us resolve to
cultivate a life of genuine, reverent and loving
prayer to God. God dwells within the baptized soul in the state of
grace, and he abides within the Tabernacle where the Holy Eucharist is
placed. Let our prayer of reverence be trusting and confident, and let
us bring to God our Father all our needs, knowing that — as our Lord
plainly teaches in our text today — that he will hear our prayers. He
is our Father, we are his children.
It cut you to the heart to hear
people
say that you had spoken badly of
those Priests. And I am glad that it hurt: for now I am sure you have
the right spirit!
(The Way,
no.73)
What
are the goods that we can merit?
Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others the
graces needed for our sanctification and for the attainment of eternal
life. Even temporal goods, suitable for us, can be merited in
accordance with the plan of God. No one, however, can merit the initial
grace which is at the origin of conversion and justification. (CCC
2010-2011, 2027)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.427)
(June 2) Saints Marcellinus
and Peter, martyrs. The account of the death of these two
martyrs, who died in the persecution of Diocletian, comes from Pope
Damasus who in turn obtained it from the executioner. They were
beheaded in a wood and then buried in the cemetery called The Two
Laurels on the Via Labicana. When peace came to the Church a basilica
was erected over their tomb. Their names are included in the Roman
Canon (First Eucharistic Prayer). (Saints)
Saint Erasmus, popularly known as
St Elmo, this early saint was Bishop of Formiae in Italy. When
the Christians were being persecuted under Emperor Diocletian according
to legend, he took refuge on Mt Lebanon, living on food brought to him
by birds. He was captured and suffered horrendous tortures before he
managed to escape and began boldly preaching again. He was recaptured
in Illyricum, tortured again, and finally killed in 303. His symbol is
a windlass used to lift a ship's anchor. St Elmo is the patron saint of
sailors. St Elmo's Fire — a electrical phenomenon that sometimes
appears on ship's mastheads after a storm, is named after him. For
centuries the parish church of Faversham in Kent had an altar dedicated
to St Erasmus with lights provided by legacies. Several alabastar
carvings, and paintings of him by Grunwald, Cranach and Dirk Bouts
survive to this day, as does a sculpture of the saint in the chapel of
Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. (Saints)
Jesus and his
disciples returned once more to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the
temple area, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders approached
him and said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things? Or
who gave you this authority to do them?” Jesus said to them, “I shall
ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority
I do these things. Was John’s baptism of heavenly or of human origin?
Answer me.” They discussed this among themselves and said, “If we say,
‘Of heavenly origin,’ he will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’
But shall we say, ‘Of human origin’?”– they feared the crowd, for they
all thought John really was a prophet. So they said to Jesus in reply,
“We do not know.” Then Jesus said to them, “Neither shall I tell you by
what authority I do these things.” (Mark 11:27-33)
It is very clear
from the Gospels that a striking feature of our Lord’s person and
public ministry was the very authority he displayed and exercised. We
could say that during the brief span of his ministry there was a time
when no one in the nation commanded the spiritual authority he did. At
his first appearance on the scene in a public sense, the prophet John
pointed to him as the one who was to come — and that was before he began to show
his qualities and prowess. The people marvelled at the authority
he displayed over the demons who seemed to be in abundance at the time
of Christ (and what book of the bible outside the Gospels shows them to
be so active?). His disciples wondered at who this man could be who
commanded the wind and the sea and it obeyed him. He cured the sick, he
raised the dead, he pronounced unhesitatingly on the important things
of the Law and on the meaning of the Scriptures. He set himself above
Moses and the prophets (“there is a greater than
Solomon...(and) Jonah
here!”). He taught new
doctrine (“but I say to you...”). Without
official authorisation he cleansed the Temple. He claimed an authority
no one
else had claimed, and he acted on it by backing it up with incomparable
miracles. He calmly and unhesitatingly forgave sins and immediately
backed up his authority to do this by working an astounding miracle in
the sight of all. There was also the authority of his very holiness and
he claimed to be holy: “Can any of you convict me of sin?”, and “I
always do what pleases him (i.e., the Father)”. Most significantly he
made claims about himself that had no precedent in the experience of
the religious authorities and mysteriously put himself on a par with
God his Father.
But in due course
our Lord was rejected by many. One of his own chosen apostles, selected
deliberately out of the body of his disciples to be one of the Twelve,
spectacularly left and betrayed him and then came to a bad and tragic
end. When our Lord preached his doctrine of the Eucharist, we are told
by John (ch.6) that many of his disciples left him — it was too much
for them, they said. In fact our Lord’s authority was not accepted by
the body of the nation’s religious leaders. In our Gospel today (Mark
11:27-33) they
come to him and demand to know the basis of his authority to say and do
what he was doing. He could see it was useless to explain this to them
for they would not believe: he pointed to the testimony of John asking
them about his authority. But they evaded his question. Now, what does
this
refusal on their part to accept the authority and revelation of Christ
remind us of?
It reminds us that no matter what steps God takes to provide signs of
his action and revelation, we must be disposed and ready to receive
them. We must be disposed to seek conscientiously to know the truth
that has been revealed from on high, and to assent to it generously. At
root the problem for man is the disposition of his will, the direction
of his fundamental free choice and preference. He is responsible for
the goodness of his choices and the most serious of his choices is what
he takes to be the truth. That is not to say that at any one point we
are responsible for not having attained the full truth that has been
revealed by God. But we are responsible for our desire to know it and
our readiness to accept it as it comes to us in the Scriptures and in
the teaching of the Church he founded and of which he is the living
head.
The scribes and
elders of our passage today showed they did not desire to know the
truth and were not ready to accept it. In our own way we can be like
them and if we are then the response of Christ will be similar to his
response to them. He will not favour us with more of his light and his
grace. As he said to them at their negative reply to him, “Neither
shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.” (Mark
11:27-33) Let
us pray for the gift of a very great faith in Jesus and a constant
readiness to accept and assent to his word.
(E.J.Tyler)
“On
what authority are you doing these
things?” (Mark 11:27-33) Saint Hilary
(315-367),
Bishop of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church (De Trinitate,VII,
26-27)
He
really does belong to the Father, this Son
who is like him. He comes from him, this Son who can be compared to
him, for he is like him. He is his equal, this Son who accomplishes the
same works as he (Jn 5:36)… Yes, the Son accomplishes the Fathers’
works; and he asks us to believe that he is the Son of God. In so
doing, he is not assuming a title to which he has no right; he is not
basing his claim on his own works. No! He bears witness to the fact
that these are not his own works, but those of his Father. And he thus
testifies that the brilliance of his actions comes to him from his
divine birth. But how could men have been able to recognize in him the
Son of God, in the mystery of this body, which had taken on, in this
man born of Mary? The Lord accomplished all those works so that faith
in him could penetrate their hearts. “If I perform the works of my
Father, even though you put no faith in me, put faith in these works.”
(Jn 10:38)
If the humble condition of his body
seems to be an obstacle to believing in his word, he asks us to believe
at least in his works. For why should the mystery of his human birth
prevent us from perceiving his divine birth? … “If you do not want to
believe in me, believe in my works so as to know and to acknowledge
that the Father is in me and I in the Father.”…
Such is the nature which he has by
birth; such is the mystery of a faith which will ensure salvation for
us: not to divide those who are one, not to deprive the Son of his
nature, and to proclaim the truth of the Living God born of the Living
God… “Just as the Father who has life sent me, so I have life because
of the Father.” (Jn 6:57) “Just as the Father possesses life in
himself, so has he granted it to the Son to have life in himself.” (Jn
5:26)
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
Are all called to Christian holiness? All the faithful are called to Christian
holiness. This is the fullness of Christian life and the perfection of
charity and it is brought about by intimate union with Christ and, in
him, with the most Holy Trinity. The path to holiness for a Christian
goes by way of the cross and will come to its fulfilment in the final
resurrection of the just, in which God will be all in all. (CCC
2012-2016, 2028-2029)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.428)
Prayers
this week: O look at me Lord and be
merciful, for I am wretched and alone. See my hardship and my poverty, and pardon all my sins.(Psalm 24: 16.18) Father, your love never fails. Hear our call. Keep us from
danger and provide for all our needs.
We ask this
through
our Lord Jesus Christ your Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one
God.
(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)
click
on arrow for video
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
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)
(June 4) Today let us think of Saint Petroc, Abbot.
Cornwall's most famous saint and early hunt saboteur. Petroc is said to
have been the son of a Welsh chieftain. He studied in Ireland before
settling in Cornwall in the 4th century. Petroc founded a monastery at
what is now called Padstow (Petroc's Stow). About 30 years later he
established another monastery at Little Petherick, where he built a
mill and a chapel. In his last years, Petroc lived as a hermit on
Bodmin Moor. He built a cell there for himself by the river and a
monastery for twelve monks who followed him. St Petroc died at Treravel
while on a journey visiting his other monasteries. He was buried at
Padstow which became the centre of his cult. His relics were later
moved to Bodmin. In 1177 a disgruntled canon took them off to the abbey
of St Mewan in Brittany. Thanks to the intervention of King Henry II
they were returned to Bodmin amidst great celebrations. This event has
been revived as part of the Bodmin Riding and Heritage Festival. The
actual reliquary survived the Reformation and the destruction of the
shrine. Petroc was greatly revered for centuries throughout Cornwall
and Brittany, (where he is known as St Perreux). The saint had a
special affinity with wild animals. One of his emblems is a stag — in
memory of one he rescued from hunters. According to legend he also once
tamed a dragon.
click on arrow for video
Scripture today:Tobit 1:3;
2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4,
5-6; Mark 12:1-12
Jesus began to
speak to the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders in parables. “A
man planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and
built a tower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and left on a
journey. At the proper time he sent a servant to the tenants to obtain
from them some of the produce of the vineyard. But they seized him,
beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent them another
servant. And that one they beat over the head and treated shamefully.
He sent yet another whom they killed. So, too, many others; some they
beat, others they killed. He had one other to send, a beloved son. He
sent him to them last of all, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But
those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill
him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him and killed
him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the
vineyard do? He will come, put the tenants to death, and give the
vineyard to others. Have you not read this Scripture passage: The
stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the
Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes?” They were
seeking to arrest him, but they feared the crowd, for they realized
that he had addressed the parable to them. So they left him and went
away.(Mark
12:1-12)
One of the most
obvious features of all human life is the fact of work. Every man
across the face of the earth is called to work, if only because his
failure to work will result in his deprivation. He has to work to
survive — but of course work has a much wider and deeper meaning than
this. Indeed, man’s call and need to work is
reflected throughout the visible creation. The animal and insect
kingdom is ever active in its effort to survive and flourish, and this
in turn is reflected in the domain of non-sentient living things that
also struggle and act in order to survive. The tree in the valley
reaches up and up in order to gain access to the sun and the elements.
All of this is a powerful reflection of what man, who is at the apex of
visible creation and who may be described as its lord, is engaged in.
Man works, and the rest of visible creation reflects this and in its
own instinctive and unchosen measure shares in it. How one would define
human work as such is a further matter that could be the subject of
endless discussion. But I suppose it could be roughly described as the
application of one’s energies to the fulfilment of a responsibility
that is chosen or imposed. Whatever about all this, the obvious law of
life and creation binding us to work in order at least to survive
clearly manifests the will of the Creator. It is an all-pervasive
pointer to the plan of God for mankind. God means us to work and we
know this because he has made it necessary for life itself — and this
is clear to all of whatever religion or none. Well now, that God has
given us work to do is abundantly obvious also from the Gospels. Among
other things, God is shown as an employer who has entrusted us with
important jobs and he will expect from us due results. At various
points Christ speaks of the work we have been given to do.
This great point is
clear in today’s Gospel in which our Lord speaks of the owner of the
vineyard entrusting it to tenants to obtain from it its produce. Of
course, the immediate context was our Lord’s conflict with the
religious leaders of the people and their persevering hostility against
him. They were like tenants who were resenting and injuring the
servants sent by the owner to collect the produce. Not only did our
Lord have them in mind, but also their predecessors in the history of
God’s people. His servants the prophets were sent and time and again
they were repulsed and even put to death. And now God had sent his son,
and what would the tenants do? “He had one other to send, a beloved
son. He sent him to them last of all, thinking, ‘They will respect my
son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come,
let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him
and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard”
(Mark 12:1-12).
The point here, though, is that each of us must take to heart the
warning our Lord directs against those who do not fulfil their
appointed charge given to them by God. All this means that at the very
centre of our religious and Christian life is our commitment to our
work. Work is not just a law of life and of success in society. That we
work well is a divine law, a requirement if we are to be pleasing to
God. It is essential for growth in Christian sanctity and for
transformation into the likeness of Christ. Consider any of the saints
and notice how industrious they were in their work in life. They saw
their work as coming to them from God, as a sacred trust. They were
like the tenants of our Gospel passage today who were entrusted with
the vineyard. They knew they had to care for the vineyard out of love
for the Master, and care for it well such that the produce would come.
Every Christian has
a work to do in life. There is no day of his life when he does not have
his work for God to do. St Bernadette Soubiroux lived a short life, and
as she entered what would be her last illness, she said of it that it
was her last “job” she had to do. She sanctified her illness and made
of it a great work for God. Every day we ought rise with the intention
of serving God as perfectly as we can in the work which he has given us
to do by vocation or providence, in all its detail. By sanctifying our
work we sanctify ourselves, we sanctify others and we contribute to the
sanctification of the world.
(E.J.Tyler)
“Go out and work in the vineyard today”(Mt
21:28) Saint [Padre] Pio of
Pietrelcina (1887-1968), Capuchin (Ep. 3; 586, 588, 62)
With all my heart I bless God for having
let me know really good souls. I could announce to them that they are
also the Lord’s vineyard: their faith is the cistern; their hope is the
tower; their love is the press; the law of God is the hedge which
separates them from the children of darkness.
I’ll stop there because the bell is
calling me; I am going to the Church’s press, to the altar. That is
where the sacred wine of this delicious and unique grape’s blood flows
constantly and from which very few have the good fortune to be able to
become intoxicated. There, you know – because I cannot do otherwise – I
will present you to the Father of Heaven united with his Son; it is in
him and with him that I am entirely yours in the Lord.
Lord Jesus, save them all. I offer
myself as a victim for all of them. Make me stronger; take my heart,
fill it with your love, and then ask of me whatever you want.
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
Why does the Magisterium of the Church act
in the field of morality?
It is the duty of the Magisterium of the Church to preach the faith
that is to be believed and put into practice in life. This duty extends
even to the specific precepts of the natural law because their
observance is necessary for salvation. (CCC 2032-2040, 2049-2051)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.430)
(June 5) Saint Boniface,
monk, bishop and martyr. St Boniface was born between 673 and
680AD to a Saxon farming family near Crediton in Devon, England. He was
baptised as Wynfrith. Educated in monastery schools in the West
Country, he became a monk, first at Exeter, then at Nursling, near
Southampton. During this time he compiled the first Latin grammar
written in English. In about 718, he left his homeland, never to
return, to take the Gospel to the pagan tribes in Germany. The results
of his mission were long-lasting. His mission extended over Hesse,
Bavaria, Westphalia, the Thuringenland, and Wurtenburg. To help in his
work he enlisted many men and women from Wessex. The text of many of
letters written by St Boniface and others from the time still exist and
depict a great and lovable man. He journeyed to Rome three times to
report to the Pope. On his second visit he was made bishop (of Mainz)
and by around 732 he was archbishop. When he was over 70 he set out on
a mission to Holland. There his life ended in martyrdom in the year
754. At a place called Dokkum he was set upon by a group of
Frieslanders armed with swords as he sat reading in his tent.
Archbishop Cuthbert of Canterbury wrote at the time: "we in England
lovingly reckon Boniface to be among the best and greatest teachers of
the faith." St Boniface is especially honoured in Germany. His tomb at
Fulda, where he established a monastery is revered as a sacred place. (Saints)
click on arrow for video
Scripture today:
Tobit
2:9-14; Psalm 112:1-2, 7-8,
9; Mark 12:13-17
Some Pharisees and
Herodians were sent to Jesus to ensnare him in his speech. They came
and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that
you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion. You do not regard a
person’s status but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or
should we not pay?” Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are
you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” They brought one to
him and he said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They
replied to him, “Caesar’s.” So Jesus said to them, “Repay to Caesar
what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” They were
utterly amazed at him.(Mark 12:13-17)
Christ is and was
the master teacher in all that pertains to God and to our service of
him. He was never caught out despite the constant attempts of his
enemies to ensnare him. Today’s Gospel scene is a case in point. Some Herodians and Pharisees — the two distinct parties see him as their joint
enemy — “were
sent” to ensnare Jesus. Their intervention was part of a plan involving
many others, and this time their question had political implications
which would enable them to place Christ in the hands of Roman law. They
begin by flattering Jesus as one concerned only for the truth as he
knows it to be and as one who never curried favour. This approach, they
hope, will encourage him to disregard Roman civil authority and by his
teaching to prompt citizens to defy it. Christ, whom St John tells us
in his Gospel could easily read the hearts of men, knew their
hypocrisy, and effortlessly answered them with a teaching which not
only amazed them but provides us with important light on the living of
the Christian life in the midst of the world. We are to “render to
Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” and at the same time we are to “render
to God what belongs to God.” (Mark 12:13-17) We
are to live in God and in Christ, but at the same time we do this in
the world, and if this is to happen the world’s authorities must be
respected. As we survey in our minds the flow of human history we can
easily see how the tension between the things pertaining to God and
those pertaining to Caesar have time and again been in tension and
confused. Nevertheless, it is clear from Christ’s teaching that a
properly understood observance of God’s commands will involve also a
striving for good citizenship. The Christian does not disregard society
and civil authority but serves God by building it up. We are called to
be good citizens.
Christ paid his
taxes. We read in the Gospels that Simon Peter was once asked by an
official if Jesus paid the temple tax, and Simon said he did indeed.
There is no record of Jesus being anything but respectful to due civil
authority. He spoke respectfully — but without the slightest fawning — to Pontius Pilate during his Passion. He would have nothing to do with
anything revolutionary and fled from the clamour to make him king. That
is not to say that he would not condemn immorality and injustice
perpetrated by civil authorities for they too were under the dominion
of God and would be judged. He would have fully supported John the
Baptist’s condemnation of King Herod’s marital situation, and he
himself called Herod a fox when told that Herod was after him. He would
not speak to him when he was sent to him by Pilate. The point to be
taken, though, from our Gospel text today is that Christ teaches us to
be good citizens, and provided the laws of the land do not contravene
God’s law, to obey them. We can take the point further and say that
Christ wishes his disciples to do all they can to ensure that Caesar
himself renders to God the things that are God’s, and to remember
constantly that he, Caesar, is not God. That is to say, we are called
to involve ourselves in civil society and conduct our involvement
according to the light and teaching of Christ. For this reason the
Church has a large body of modern social teaching stemming mainly from
the great social encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XII over one
hundred years ago. But all too often this body of social doctrine
applying the teaching of Christ to the earthly city is ignored by those
who occupy the place of Caesar and who formulate the laws of the
earthly city. I refer to those Catholics and Christians who are in
political life and who make their decisions without reference to
Christ.
Let us take to
heart the fundamental principle offered to us by the Lord in our text
today. We belong to Christ and as persons who are in him we live our
lives as members of society and the world. We have a responsibility to
the world and this responsibility is to be lived out according due
respect for its laws and institutions. We must render to Caesar what
belongs to Caesar, while at the same time reminding Caesar that he is
not God — which he is very prone to think.
(E.J.Tyler)
This tying of one's life to a
plan, to a timetable, you tell me, is so monotonous! And I answer:
there is monotony because there is little Love.
(The Way,
no.77)
What purpose do the precepts of the
Church have? The five precepts of the Church
are meant to guarantee for the faithful
the indispensable minimum in the spirit of prayer, the sacramental
life, moral commitment and growth in love of God and neighbour. (CCC
2041, 2048)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.431)
(June 6) Saint Norbert
Bishop and founder. Born into an aristocratic family near Cleves
in the Rhineland, Germany, in around 1080. Norbert embarked on a
comfortable career holding several posts at the wealthy courts of
Archbishop Frederick I
and Emperor Henry V. When he was about 35, he
had a riding accident, narrowly escaping death, and underwent a sudden
conversion which made him give up his life at court to become a priest.
He became a canon of the cathedral of Xanten, and soon tried to reform
the canons of Xanten, asking them to give up their luxurious lifestyle
and devote more time to prayer and pastoral duties. His appeal was
treated with contempt, so he left the court to become an itinerant
preacher going throughout France and Germany and other places preaching
the word of God. With the help of companions who joined him he founded
a community of reformed canons under the rule of St Augustine at
Premontre. This was the first house of the Premonstratensians (now
normally called the Norbertines). The new order was very popular in
Western Europe because it combined the priesthood with an austere daily
life. In 1126 he was chosen as archbishop of Magdeburg and introduced
many reforms into his diocese, fighting corrupt practices among the
clergy and laity. In 1130 he put all his influence behind Pope Innocent
t II in his struggle with the antipope Pierleone. Norbert was appointed
Chancellor for Italy by Emperor Lothair II. There was more than one
attempt on his life. In the 20 years that he lived after his conversion
he made a great mark on his era. Norbert died in Magdeburg in 1134 and
was canonised in 1582. His relics were moved to the abbey church of his
order at Strahove near Prague. His emblem is a monstrance. (Saints)
click on arrow for video
Scripture today: Tobit 3:1-11a,
16-17a; Psalm 25:2-3, 4-5ab, 6 and 7bc, 8-9; Mark 12:18-27
Some Sadducees, who
say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and put this question to
him, 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 and died, leaving no descendants. So the second
brother married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third
likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also
died. At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For
all seven had been married to her.” Jesus said to them, “Are you not
misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When
they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised,
have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush,
how God told him, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are
greatly misled.” (Mark 12:18-27)
One could surely
say that the most sorrowful spectacle everywhere and in all ages is the
universal fact of death. All things that live love to live, and yet
this love of life is doomed to frustration because all living things
will die. The beautiful flower triumphs in its blossoming, and soon
fades into death. The grand and strong tree which rises and expands to
a great height and strength, and which lives on for some hundredsof years exhaling into the air what other
creatures need and giving of its substance to conserve other things eventually dies. The animal and insect
kingdoms abound with an astonishingly variant life, and all of it dies
while being replaced by its next generation which dies too. Finally,
man who is the lord and steward of our beautiful world is born, lives
his life, and then like all other living things also must die. What a
sad end to something — I refer to life — which offers so much promise!
Death has exercised the mind of man from age to age and in religion
after religion and it has clearly been one of the defining issues of
one system of thought after another. Ultimately, though, the practical
issue is, will death be the end, or in some way yet another beginning?
Man began at his birth. Will he continue on in some sense after his
death? Various religions have taught that man begins again and again
reincarnating in this life, while there are other religions which while
profoundly affected by the doom of death do not point to much by way of
a future life. Well then, in our Gospel today (Mark 12:18-27) our Lord is approached
by representatives of a tradition in Judaism, the Sadducees, which did
not allow for a future resurrection. Their very existence as a school
of opinion in Judaism shows the less than resoundingly clear message
about the Afterlife provided by the Scriptures to that point.
Our Lord’s reply to
them provides one of his many references to what will happen to us
after our death. Of all the ancient figures and teachers, of all the
founders of religions and masters of human thought, no one has spoken
with such power and clarity about what happens to man after he dies. In
a sense God the Son became man because man dies. He came to deal with
death because the danger facing man was a death far more terrible than
he realized. While man knows he dies, he did not know how utter can be
his death if sin is allowed its reign. The danger hanging over every
man is that of dying forever — not passing into a total oblivion but of
perishing forever in an active sense. I am referring to the fires of
hell. I have known people getting on in life who have thought that
there is no Afterlife but that at the end of one’s life one simply
ceases to exist in a personal sense much like any dog or cat. This is a
cop-out and is a belief — one without evidence — that can take away
one’s sense of moral responsibility. If there is no Afterlife there is
of course no judgment and so no consequences for ones misdeeds. It will
be a case of eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Christ has
revealed that following our death there is a personal judgment, and the
soul to be judged lives on forever with the results of that judgment.
His teaching also gives a divine interpretation of the meaning of the
Old Testament on this matter. The Sadducees, our Lord tells them, did
not know the Scriptures nor the power of God. God is the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and inasmuch as God is not God of the dead
but of the living then Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were alive. The
Sadducees were very much mistaken as are all who think there is no a
resurrection from the dead. Life is short, eternity is very long.
Any sensible person
looks ahead, learning from the past to make provision for the future.
The past is dominated by the figure and the teaching of Jesus Christ,
as is the present and the future. We must look ahead in the light of
his revelation. All of us will live on forever. The question is, how
are we going to ensure that the life we shall live is life in abundance
and not a living death. Following death there is our judgment, and
following that, there is either heaven or hell and each lasts forever.
The way to life lies in Christ. The way to death lies in refusing him.
What are the precepts of the Church? They are: 1) to attend Mass on Sundays
and other holy days of obligation and to refrain from work and
activities which could impede the sanctification of those days; 2) to
confess one's sins, receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation at least
once each year; 3) to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least
during the Easter season; 4) to abstain from eating meat and to observe
the days of fasting established by the Church; and 5) to help to
provide for the material needs of the Church, each according to his own
ability. (CCC 2042-2043)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.432)
(June 7) Today let us think of
Blessed Emmanuel Ruiz and his
Companions(Saints) Saint
Meriadoc Bishop,
patron of Cambourne in Cornwall. St Meriadoc (also known as Meriasek)
was probably a Welshman who founded at least one church in Cornwall and
several churches and monasteries in Brittany. He eventually became a
bishop there and his feast is celebrated in several Breton dioceses to
this day. The rare Cornish miracle play: Beunans Meriasek, tells his
life story. St Meriadoc was once very rich but he gave away all his
possessions — much to the consternation of his relatives — and devoted
his life to prayer and caring for the sick and needy. 'Poverty is a
remover of cares and the mother of holiness,' he said. His bell is
still in the church at Stival. Placed on the heads of migraine
sufferers or the deaf, it is said to heal them.
At Cordova in the Vandalicia region of Spain, of the sainted matyrs Peter, priest, Wallabonsus,
deacon, Sabinian, Wistremundus, Habentius, and Jeremiah, monks,
who had their throats slit for the sake of Christ in the persecution of
the Moors.
One of the scribes
came to Jesus and asked him, “Which is the first of all the
commandments?” Jesus replied, “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The
Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your
strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbour as
yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” The scribe
said to him, “Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, He is One
and there is no other than he. And to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your
neighbour as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and
sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he
said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” And no one
dared to ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34)
If we allow our
minds to roam and survey the scene of world literature, and to think of
its poems, its drama, its stories and its novels, one great theme
stands out before us. It is human love. Popular songs exult in love.
Popular novels in one form or another recount the story of human love.
Now, this is natural because man is
made for love and he is called to have it fill his life. It is manifest
that the key to happiness is love, and this is even reflected in an
unreasoning way in the animal world in which animals accompany one
another, act as companions, and so forth. The question is, what kind of
love will brings true human happiness because a further theme in the
history and literature of mankind is the tragedy and travesty of much
of human love. In popular romance, be it in television and movies, the
love that is often depicted is scarcely love at all but mere passing
lust. The question that arises is, therefore, what guidance does
the good God give us about the instinctive desire he has implanted in
our nature to find love and to give it? Well, our Lord is explicit on
the point and he places love at the very heart of all God’s
commandments to man. In this sense our Gospel passage today is a
fundamental text of the New Testament for it reveals the plan of God
for man and gives the key to the understanding of the Scriptures. One
of the scribes, a person who studied assiduously the Old Testament with
all its commandments and laws, “came to Jesus and asked him ‘Which is
the first of all the commandments?’”. Without any hesitation our Lord
gave the answer: “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God
is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The
second is this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no
other commandment greater than these.” (Mark
12:28-34)
So every human
being is called by God to love with all his heart — but the object of
this love must in the first place be God himself. This is what is
generally forgotten by mankind. It is to be noted that the scribe who
showed appreciation and understanding of what our Lord had said was
told by our Lord that he was “not far from the kingdom of God.” He had
the perception to see the truth of what our Lord had just taught, and
this very understanding put him on the way to the kingdom of God. There
are so many who do not even see the truth of revelation nor, therefore,
do they accept it. The first thing we must do if we are to order our
lives aright is to accept wholeheartedly the truth of our Lord’s
teaching — precisely because it is the teaching of the Son of God made
man. Being his teaching, it is therefore most true. Then, having
accepted it with a full religious assent, we must make it our life’s
work to put it into practice. I make a passing observation here. I
suspect that one of the distinctive features of the revealed religion
of Judaism and Christianity is that God is to be the object not just of
our awe, reverence and service but of our love. I do not think this is
readily found outside revealed religion — except in the case of those
religions influenced by Revelation. We should have reverence and awe
before him because he is our infinite God, but at the same time this
infinite God invites us actually to come close to him and to love him.
It is to be a loving reverence as towards a most revered and loving
Father. The one almighty God called his chosen people into a friendship
with him, into an intimacy of reverent and obedient love. Moses was his
friend. His people were described by certain prophets as his spouse,
and God as their husband. Christ is the full development of this. As St
Paul writes, in him is the fullness of the Godhead bodily and we are
called to be his chosen and intimate friends.
Every day let us
set out to fulfill our vocation and to love the good God as fully as we
can that day. As our Lord said, if you love me you will keep my
commandments. Our love is manifested in the recognition of God’s
supreme authority over our lives and our obedience to his will. It is
shown in our total assent to the truth he has revealed, and in our
daily fulfilment of the duties he gives us in our vocation or in the
circumstances of his providence. Let us therefore resolve to love him
with all our heart, and, in obedience to him, our neighbour as ourself.
Why is the Christian moral life
indispensable for the proclamation of the Gospel?
Because their lives are conformed to the Lord Jesus, Christians draw
others to faith in the true God, build up the Church, inform the world
with the spirit of the Gospel, and hasten the coming of the Kingdom of
God. (CCC 2044-2046)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.433)
(June 8) Today let us
think of
Saint William of York, Archbishop.
A patron saint of victims of injustice. St William of York's early
career in the church was very successful. As a young man in 1130, he
was appointed treasurer of York and chaplain to King Steven. He was
known as a kind and good-natured person. When the archbishop of York
died, the authorities chose William as his successor. But from that
time on things went badly wrong, as he became the innocent victim of
malicious gossip. Bernard and the Yorkshire Cistercians accused him of
a number of wicked deeds shortly before he was to be installed as
Archbishop of York. This set off a wrangle that was to last for years.
William retired to Winchester and lived devoutly as a monk until 1153,
when his name was cleared. Enormous crowds greeted him when he returned
to York. But he died suddenly, possibly of poisoning, just a month
later. He was buried in his cathedral and many miracles began to be
reported at his tomb. Pope Honorius II appointed the monks of Fountains
and Rievaulx to investigate his life and miracles. He was canonised in
1227. In 1421 the famous St William window was made, depicting his
life, death, translation and miracles in 62 scenes. St William's shrine
flourished for centuries. A few modern churches are named after
him.
As Jesus was
teaching in the temple area he said, “How do the scribes claim that the
Christ is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit,
said: The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I place
your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls him ‘lord’; so how
is he his son?” The great crowd heard this with delight.(Mark 12:35-37)
At various points
in the Gospels we see how great was Christ’s veneration for the
Scriptures — meaning here the Old Testament. As a child of twelve he
was found by his anxious parents sitting in the Temple in the midst of
the doctors of the Law asking questions and profoundly impressing them
with his intelligence and replies. Undoubtedly the
object of their interchange was the meaning of the inspired Scriptures.
He often indicated to his disciples how he, the Son of Man, fulfilled
the Scriptures. He showed his disciples before and after his death that
the Scriptures taught that the Messiah would have to suffer in order to
enter his glory. In his conflicts with the religious leaders of the
people he often refuted them by his serene mastery of the Scriptures.
The Sadducees came to him with an argument from the Scriptures against
the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead. He refuted them by his
effortless reference to an unsuspected text of the Scriptures. Jesus
was the incomparable teacher of the true meaning of the Scriptures. In
our Gospel today our Lord again dazzled his audience with his reference
to an unnoticed Scriptural reference to the lordship of the Messiah.
All knew that the Messiah was to be the son of David. We remember how
when Herod consulted the religious authorities as to where the Messiah
was to be born, they answered that he was to be born at Bethlehem the
town of his ancestor David. In our passage today (Mark 12:35-37) our Lord, quoting the
psalm, points out that the Holy Spirit (through the mouth of “David
himself”) refers to the Messiah primarily as David’s “lord” whom God
sets at his right hand until he places his enemies under his feet. So
the Christ is lord of David, in some sense he is on a par with God
himself, and by
the power of God his enemies will be subjected to him — and all of this
while being son of David.
The great point of
our Lord’s passing use of the psalm is to bring out the supreme
grandeur of the person of the Messiah. Scripture has unsuspected depths
of meaning and richness and this is the case most especially in all
that relates to the Messiah who is to come. In fact, as the Church has
often taught, the entire Old Testament should be read in the light of
the Messiah who has in fact come in the person of Jesus. He it is who
beams a great light on the Scriptures and gives to it its unity and
true meaning. If we approach not only the New Testament in this way but
also the Old, then the various and seemingly disconnected elements
become a powerful witness to the one thing necessary: the salvation
that has come from God in the person of the Messiah. That Messiah has
come, and as it turns out he is far greater than a reading of the
Scriptures would have led one to expect. He is the King of kings and
the Lord of lords — and is David his father’s Lord as well. There is no
king nor any lord who is not subject to him. As he said after having
risen from the dead, all authority in heaven and on earth had been
given to him, and he sits now at the right hand of the Father working
as head of his Church to bring all the nations into his kingdom. Of his
kingdom there will be no end and finally all will be brought “under his
feet.” This Jesus who in our Gospel scene today was “teaching in the
temple” is the Master of mankind. Jesus Christ is Lord and he sits at
the right hand of the Father, indeed he is in fact God. The great work
of life is to recognize
this and to bring the whole of one’s life into accord with it, and to
contribute towards its recognition by all mankind. Let us read the
Scriptures with Jesus as our teacher, and with his Holy Spirit to guide
us to the discovery of him in them.
Place yourself,
dear friend, in the company of Jesus. He lives now and is very near to
you. He is your Lord and he is the Lord of all things, seen and unseen.
He is the one and only divine Saviour of mankind. The one thing
necessary is
to become his disciple, his servant and his friend in a genuine and
true way. He is found in his body the Church, of which he is the
abiding head. Let us then resolve to belong to him and to live in him
every day of our lives.
(E.J.Tyler)
His name is “King of kings and Lord of
lords."(Revelation 19:16) Saint Cyril of Jerusalem
(313-350), Bishop of Jerusalem, Doctor of the Church
(Baptismal
Catechesis 10, 2-5; PG 33, 662f)
If any one wishes to show piety towards
God, let him worship the Son; otherwise the Father does not accept his
homage. The Father spoke with a loud voice from heaven, saying, “This
is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17). The Father
was well pleased with the Son... who is called “Lord” (Lk 2:11), not
improperly as those who are so called among men, but as having a
natural and eternal lordship...
While remaining who he is and truly
holding unchanged the dignity of his Sonship, he adapts himself to our
infirmities, like an excellent physician or a compassionate teacher. He
is truly Lord; he did not receive this title by some sort of
advancement. The dignity of lordship is his by nature. He was not given
the title”lord” as we are, but he is so in truth, since by the Father's
bidding he is Lord over his own works. Human lordship is exercised over
people of dignity and weakness equal to our own, even over our elders;
often a young master rules over aged servants. But in the case of our
Lord Jesus Christ, lordship is not of this nature: he is first Maker,
then Lord. First he made all things by the Father's will, then, he is
Lord of the things which were made by him.
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
When you bring order into your
life your time will multiply, and then you will be able to give God
more glory, by working more in his service.
(The Way,
no.80)
“Teacher, what good must I do
to have eternal life?”(Matthew 19:16)
To the young man who asked this question, Jesus answered, “If you would
enter into life, keep the commandments”, and then he added, “Come,
follow Me” (Matthew 19:16-21). To follow Jesus involves keeping the
commandments. The law has not been abolished but man is invited to
rediscover it in the Person of the divine Master who realized it
perfectly in himself, revealed its full meaning and attested to its
permanent validity. (CCC 2052-2054, 2075-2076)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.434)
(June 9) St Ephraem of Syria,
Deacon and Doctor of the Church. Born of a Christian family in
Nisibis, Mesopotamia in about the year 306, he was ordained a deacon
and worked both in his own country and at Edessa where he laid the
foundations of the School of Theology. He lived a life of asceticism
though at the same time he did not neglect the ministry of preaching;
and he wrote a number of works to refute the errors in doctrine current
at the time. He wrote poems and hymns about the mysteries of Christ and
the Virgin Mary. He was a poet, orator, holy monk, and had a great
devotion to the Mother of God. He died in the year 373.
(Saints)
Let us also think of Saint
Columba (not the
later St Columban who went to France, and whose day is November
23) Born at Gartan in Co Donegal, in 521, St Columba was
trained as a monk first by Finian of Moville and then by Finian of
Clonard. He spent 15 years in Ireland preaching and founding
monasteries — the greatest of these being Kells, Durrow and Derry. Then
in 565 he left with twelve companions for the Scottish island of Iona.
There he founded the community that was to become the heart of Celtic
Christianity. From Iona, Columba and his monks made extensive journeys — evangelising the north of England and establishing religious
communities. One story has it that the king of the Picts, Brude, and
many of his people, were
converted after watching Columba drive away a sea monster. According to
his biographer Adomnan, writing a century later, Columba was a
charismatic figure, who combined the skills of scholar, scribe, poet
and ruler with a fearless commitment to God's cause. On this day in
587, St Columba was copying the psalm: 'They that love the Lord shall
lack no good thing' — when he had to stop as he was too weak to
continue. He died shortly afterwards. Adoman writes that he was: "loving to everyone, happy-faced, rejoicing in his inmost heart with the
joy of the Holy Spirit."
In the course of
his teaching Jesus said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to go around
in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honour
in synagogues, and places of honour at banquets. They devour the houses
of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive
a very severe condemnation.” He sat down opposite the treasury and
observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people
put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins
worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them,
“Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other
contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their
surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had,
her whole livelihood.”(Mark 12:38-44)
As a generalization
that allows for exceptions we could say that every man (meaning, of
course, every man and woman) wants to achieve. We can constantly
improve in our own persons and in our activity and work, and one of the
distinguishing features of man as against the animal is that man has a
desire for and a gift for perfection. The animal is set in his
instincts and operates to satisfy them. While man has limits to his capacities,
nevertheless he desires to develop, to improve, and gradually to attain
the best he is capable of. He uses his mind and his freedom to attain
the heights. This desire of his nature for the perfection of himself
and his work is the basis in nature for his efforts to attain by the
power of grace that perfection of love for God to which he is called.
Good work is the means of doing this. The point, though, of this
general observation is that it is the most natural thing in the world
to want to do our best and to give our all. We want to achieve, and we
feel a commendable sense of fulfilment in doing good work. If we do not
work, or if we do not work well, or if our work seems to be fruitless,
then we lack a sense of fulfilment. If life passes and we have not
worked then we have been reprehensible. But now, what is to be said of
the very common phenomenon of people seeing little for all their
efforts especially when compared with the results of the efforts of
others? The overwhelming majority of persons are what we could call the
little people. We look at our limited means, our very unimpressive
round of daily activity and work, our seemingly insignificant daily
attainments, and ask ourselves, what have I to show for all my work?
How am I ever to do the good or produce the fruit that will give to my
life great value? What we are looking at here is the problem of the
life of the very ordinary person living a life made up of very small
duties, and having no notable impact and very little recognition from
others. How is the ordinary person to attain grandeur?
Ah! The little
person can indeed attain great grandeur, but by and large it is
grandeur in the sight of God. To a fair extent the value of the small
can be seen by any clear thinking person. The great
philosopher-economist, E. F. Schumaker, came out with his famous book
some decades ago, Small
is Beautiful.
Man, he said, is small and therefore small is beautiful. In our Gospel
today our Lord makes a point which ought be providing us with
consolation and inspiration all our lives. He was sitting in sight of
the treasury in the Temple, and was watching “how the crowd put money
into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow
also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his
disciples to himself, he said to them, ‘Amen, I say to you, this poor
widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For
they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her
poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood’.” (Mark
12:38-44).
That poor widow gave her all. She had practically nothing. She was
unnoticed. She might have been regarded as possibly useless, and she
might have regarded herself as such. Perhaps she had no one else left
in her life, but only God. She gave him her all, small as it was — and
in her case Small was very beautiful. Our Lord held her up for the
example of is disciples, and through them she is an example for all
mankind. Every single person ought place himself in the company of our
Lord as he points towards the small widow giving to God everything she
had, her whole livelihood. A little earlier in this very chapter of St
Mark’s Gospel our Lord lays it down that the first and greatest
commandment is that we love God with all our heart, all our soul, our
mind and our strength. This is what the poor widow was doing in giving
to God her mite. It is what every person is called to do and can do.
We may not have
many talents, indeed we may have only one. But that talent we must put
to assiduous work so that the Lord and Master may be served and
glorified. All this is to say that the heights of perfection both of
nature and grace can be attained by the loving fulfilment of our
ordinary duties of state no matter how seemingly insignificant those
duties may be. Small is indeed beautiful provided the small is made
holy in the way the widow made her mite holy.
(E.J.Tyler)
How did Jesus interpret the Law? Jesus interpreted the Law in the light of
the twofold yet single commandment of love, the fullness of the Law:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first
commandment. And the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as
yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the
Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). (CCC 2055)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.435)
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 usand the peace of the kingdom where
you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.
(June 10)
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.(Saints)
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
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)
Prayers today: The
Lord is my light and my salvation. Who shall frighten me? The Lord is the
defender of my life. Who shall make me tremble? (Psalm
26:1-2)
God of wisdom and love, source of all good, send your Spirit to teach us your
truth and guide our actions in your way of peace. We ask this through our Lord
Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus went to a town called Nain, and
his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town
gate, a dead person was being carried out— the only son of his mother, and she
was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw
her, his heart went out to her and he said, Do not weep. Then he went up and
touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, Young man, I say
to you, get up! The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back
to his mother. They were all filled with awe and praised God. A great prophet
has appeared among us, they said. God has come to help his people.
(Luke 7: 11-17)
Death The two greatest events in the life of
any person are his birth and his death. Of the two, the greater was his birth.
Of his birth he has no recollection. He could not prepare for it. He had no say
in its happening. He was completely at the disposal of events in respect to it.
It is only gradually that he learns that he did come to birth. But everything
pivots on its having occurred. He would be nothing, and would be no reference
point for anything at all, with no prospects ahead whatever, had he not been
born. If he reflects at all, he will sense that because of his birth, there has
been placed in his hands a tremendous responsibility which he did not ask for,
but which is unavoidably his. If he does not take up his life and make of it a
great work with the time he has, then his life will be tragic. If he does assume
responsibility for himself and pursue a course of rational and moral choice,
then happiness will be his. The most significant thing in the life of every
person is that he was born. What is the meaning of it, though? That is to say,
what is the meaning of life? If he does not attain the answer to this, how will
he know how best to live? In fact, the answer is inextricably connected with the
second most important event in the life of every person, which is that he will
die. As he was growing up he saw people around him die, and that was the end for
them. He heard it said that everyone dies, and was told that he too would die,
and he came to be convinced that this was indeed the case. He was born into this
life, and he must die and away pass from it. The realization of this coming
event - the greatest he must face - leads him to ask, what will happen to me
after my death? On the face of it, death is a simple black hole. A person lives
his life, dies and then he is gone. All his friends are helpless before this
event, as is he. At most he and they may postpone it, but it cannot be avoided.
It is the greatest event to be faced, and it is the one that looks most devoid
of meaning. Whatever one makes of life, death tears it all away and leaves
little to show.
Our Gospel today (Luke 7: 11-17) places us
in the scene of the widow of Nain leaving the town with the body of her only
son. Her son has died, and the light has gone from her life. There have been any
number of attempts to understand the meaning of death. It is a major issue for
the religions of man and for many philosophical systems. But in the last
analysis, what certain knowledge can man have of what has happened to those who
have died, and of what will happen to himself after he dies? He hazards a guess
and stakes the course of his life on it - by not caring or, say, by being very
religious - but what a boon to know for certain! What is to be made of death?
Ah! In this as in all things, Christ is the Light of the world. Jesus Christ was
born - and how great an event was the birth of the eternal Son of God! - and the
principal thing he came among us to do was to die. His greatest achievement came
in his death. By dying, he turned the world around, as it were. It was the
greatest work he accomplished, and by means of his death he took away the sin of
the world and reconciled it to God. Through his death he attained his glory,
rising with a new life that is forever beyond the reach of death - and, wonder
of wonders! - he shares this risen life with us at our Baptism. By means of our
Baptism we have shared mysteriously and sacramentally in the death of Christ and
we share his life now. Our grand task is to grow in this divine life. Every time
we die to sin and self in union with Jesus Christ, this eternal life granted to
us grows the more. If we die in the grace of Christ, then our physical death
completes this daily dying with Christ and union with him. Thus death is now no
longer a great black hole but the greatest and most positive thing we can “do.”
As it was with Christ, so in the case of each of us, death is a call from God to
unite ourselves to his holy will. In union with Christ and with his grace we can
make of this greatest event of life the greatest act of loving obedience to God.
Death is the crowning act of life’s acts, the one above all to be prepared for
every day of our lives.
At our Baptism, Christ does for our souls what he did for the dead young man of
Nain. He raises us up. But in Baptism, he raises us up from the death of
Original Sin to life in him. This new life must be resolutely lived by following
in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, and his path is that of self-denial in doing
the will of the Father. A great event is coming for every one of us, just as it
was coming in the life of Jesus Christ. That event is our death, and it is an
event full of possibilities and fruit, provided we meet it with the mind of
Christ. It is the greatest moment of surrender to the will of the Father that is
open to us. So much hinges will on it. Let us prepare for it every day by
leading a life of obedience to God in the little duties before us, in union with
Jesus Christ.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church,
no.1010-1014: (Christian meaning of death)
(June 11) Saint
Barnabas, apostle. Born in the island of Cyprus,
A
Jewish Cypriot and Levite, he was
one of the first converts in Jerusalem and preached at Antioch. He
was originally called Joseph, but when he sold all his
possessions and gave the money to the apostles, his parents gave him
his new name, meaning 'son of consolation'. It was
Barnabas who introduced St Paul to the other apostles, paving the way
for the broad apostolate which required the approval of the pillars of
the Church. With John Mark and Paul he sailed on the
first missionary
expedition to Cyprus and is honoured as a founder of the Church there.
At
the Council of Jerusalem, Barnabas supported the Gentile Christians.
Paul's references to him in Galatians may indicate that he evangelised
beyond Cyprus. He
returned to his native land to preach the Gospel and died a martyr to
the faith during Nero’s reign. Legends claim he was
martyred at Salamis in the year 61. His name is included in the Roman Canon.
In England there are 13 ancient churches dedicated to
him and several modern ones.(Saints)
When Jesus saw the
crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his
disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they
who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they
will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they
will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called
children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of
righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you
when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil
against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward
will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were
before you.” (Matthew 5:1-12)
It is a common
position among atheists that religion is one of the sources of evil in
the world. Religion for them does not bring blessings and true
happiness. Karl Marx would have it that religion is an opiate of the
masses — it drugs them into stoically putting up with injustices and an
impossibly futile life with the thought of a pie in the
sky. Richard Dawkins of Oxford has considered religion to be a massive
delusion which also perpetrates crime. It is the God delusion. Behind
all these starkly contrasting positions is the cry of man for happiness
and his puzzlement as to how it is to be found. There never has been a
consensus except that the voice of mankind has without question pointed
to the Beyond as holding the key to human joy. Whatever be the view of
this or that scientist or philosopher, the great stream of mankind has
been convinced that somehow happiness is connected with the powers
above. Man’s understanding of the connection is clouded and his beliefs
as to how happiness comes in and through religion has more than often
been hopelessly flawed, but in the main — except for the anomaly of
modern secularism — there never has been a doubt that happiness cannot
be separated from religion. Man knows in his heart that the man of
religion is blessed and that happiness will be his. But the question
is, what religion is it that will bring this blessedness, for clearly
so many do not? We need a Master and a Guide, a Teacher of religion who
will bring the happiness to which man aspires and is clearly called.
That Master and Guide, that teacher of the things of God, that bearer
of happiness is Jesus Christ. In him resides every heavenly blessing,
and so we look to him to know how man will be blessed. In our Gospel
today we are offered our Lord’s charter for happiness. It is very
different from the charter of the world.
In
our passage today — the famous one known commonly as the Beatitudes,
from the Latin for blessedness or happiness — our Lord chooses to speak
of the religion he reveals in terms of the joy and happiness it will
bring to man. Of course we do not commit ourselves to God and his
service in order simply to be happy because that would be a form of
self-worship. But worshipping, loving and serving God will bring us
happiness in the process, and it is Christ who shows us which religion
will do this. It is the religion of the Beatitudes. Now, where are we
to start in our understanding and interpretation of Christ’s
Beatitudes? Our Lord tells us that the poor in spirit, the meek, those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the clean of
heart, and those who are persecuted for righteousness and for the sake
of him, will be the truly happy and blessed(Matthew
5:1-12).
What is to be our perspective on this, what unifying light shines on
this teaching giving to it its meaning? St Paul writes in one of his
letters that we are to put on the mind of Christ. Let this mind be in
you that was in Christ Jesus, he tells us. The Beatitudes unfold before
us the mind of Christ. Christ in promising us happiness if we follow
his way as outlined here is promising us a share in his own happiness.
By being his disciples in truth we shall share in his joy both here and
hereafter. Therefore, we should understand every one of the beatitudes
as a revelation of the mind and heart of Christ. To consider and
understand properly the poor in spirit, we look to Christ. In
contemplating the meek, or the one who hungers and thirsts for
righteousness, or the merciful, or the clean of heart or the one
persecuted for righteousness and the gospel, and indeed all of these
together, we look to the person of Christ. He is the embodiment of each
of the beatitudes, and in committing ourselves to live them we are in
effect committing ourselves to the imitation of Christ.
When the
Christian embraces the beatitudes he is deciding to come to Christ and
learn from him, for he is meek and humble of heart, knowing that
therein we shall find rest for our souls. His yoke is easy and his
burden light. Let us be assured that if we take Christ for our Teacher
and make the religion he revealed and established in the Church his
body, then happiness will be ours. As he said, it will be a hundredfold
in this life — not without persecutions — and eternal life in the next.
(E.J.Tyler)
What is the bond between the Decalogue
and the Covenant?
The Decalogue must be understood in the light of the Covenant in which
God revealed himself and made known his will. In observing the
commandments, the people manifested their belonging to God and they
answered his initiative of love with thanksgiving. (CCC 2058-2063, 2077)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.437)
(June 12) Today let us think of
Saint Peter of Mount
Athos, Monk and hermit.
According to legend, he was originally a soldier who was captured and
imprisoned by the Muslims. St Simeon is said to have negotiated his
release. After this he went to Rome where he was granted the monastic
habit by the Pope. He then experienced a vision of Our Lady, and
journeyed to Mount Athos where he lived the life of a hermit for the
next 50 years. St Peter of Mount Athos reputedly overcame many severe
trials and temptations, during his life, including assaults by the
devil. He is believed to be the first hermit to live on Mount Athos,
sparking the tradition which lead to the foundation of the great
monasteries upon the Holy Mountain.
(Saints)
click on arrow for video
Scripture today: 2 Corinthians
1:18-22; Psalm 119:129-133, 135; Matthew
5:13-16
Jesus said to his
disciples: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste,
with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to
be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A
city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and
then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lamp stand, where it
gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before
others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly
Father.”(Matthew 5:13-16)
Let us notice a detail about this well known
passage from the Sermon on the Mount, as reported in St Matthew’s Gospel.
Our Lord tells his disciples that they are salt and light. Salt in the
ancient world preserved food — especially meat — from corruption
and of course it seasoned the food to add to its taste. Light, on which so
much depended, had to be sought without any of the modern provision of
electricity and other forms of energy. Christ’s
disciples are that salt and that light (Matthew 5:13-16). But observe that the
salt of the disciples is salt of “the earth”, and the light of the
disciples is the light of “the world”. That is to say, Christ is not
just speaking of their mission to others of the household of the
Church. He is also speaking of their mission to the world, for they are
the salt of “the earth”, and the light of “the world”. All of
Christ’s faithful have a mission to the world, to the world of their
everyday life, to the world in which they find themselves by vocation
or divine providence, to the world of their family and work and society
at large. They exercise this mission to the world by letting their
light shine before others and in that way glorifying their Father in
heaven. That “light” is the light of Christ’s gospel as explained by
the Church which speaks in his name. Our Lord points out that if his
disciples do not do this then they are useless as salt and will be
thrown out. It is, then, an immensely serious responsibility to
endeavour every day to exercise an effective influence on Christ’s
behalf in one’s secular environment. Indeed, the Church in her teaching
points out that this is the characteristic vocation of the lay
faithful. They are to bring Christ and his teaching to the world and
thus make disciples of all the nations. If they simply conform to the
world rather than influencing it, Christ says they will be “thrown out.”
There are
two obvious dangers for Christ’s faithful. The first is, obviously,
that of failing to believe with genuine conviction all that Christ has
taught as it is enunciated by the Church. Many count themselves as
members of the Catholic Church while picking and choosing among its
teachings. They accept one and not the other. They fail to give Christ
their total assent to his word as the Church proclaims it, and where
this is the case, through their own fault they simply lack the light
that is available to them as members of Christ's Church. The upshot of
this
is that, culpably, they are unable to be the salt of the earth and
light of the world which Christ commands his disciples to be. They are
unable to let their light shine before men and give glory to their
Father in heaven because they do not have the light. The second danger
is that, while possessing the light and knowing what is the will of God
for man, they conform to the world in terms of what they stand for in
society. A common subterfuge in this respect is that which is employed
in the abortion debate: I personally believe that abortion is wrong,
but I will respect the right of others to make their own choice — and
in the meantime countless numbers of the unborn are put to death. The
same sort of thing is present in the debate over embryonic stem cells,
human cloning and other attacks on the sanctity of life. The Catholic
in society and in politics is called by God to bear unflinching witness
to the truth as it is revealed by Christ and set forth by the Church
which speaks in his name. This bearing witness to the light of Christ
is the greatest possible service to the world. It gives to the world
its “salt” preserving it from corruption and making it pleasing in the
sight of God. It gives to the world that light without which the world
would be in the darkness of unknowing death.
For the
ordinary member of Christ’s faithful whose sphere of life and influence
is limited, the issues are the same. He is called to bear witness to
Christ’s light and teaching where his vocation and the providence of
God places him in the world. He is the presence of Christ and the
Church in the world. Through him Christ is there, as is his body the
Church. For the sake of the world, let every lay Christian in the world
bear this unflinching witness to Christ’s teaching.
(E.J.Tyler)
What importance does the Church give
to the Decalogue?
The Church, in fidelity to Scripture and to the example of Christ,
acknowledges the primordial importance and significance of the
Decalogue. Christians are obliged to keep it.(CCC 2064-2068)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.438)
Saint
Anthony of Padua, priest and doctor of the Church
(Wednesday of
the tenth week of Ordinary Time I)
(June 13) St
Anthony of Padua, priest
and doctor of the Church(1195-1231).
Franciscan friar.
St Antony was born in Lisbon in 1193. He came from a noble family. At
around the age of 16 he joined the Austin Canons and studied at
Coimbra. About 1220 he met some Franciscans on their way to Morocco.
The group were martyred. St Antony was so impressed with them he became
a Franciscan himself and travelled to Ceuta in the hope of continuing
their mission. Instead he became ill and was forced to return home. In
1221 he took part in the General Chapter of Assisi. He was sent to the
small hermitage of St Paulo near Forli. One day he was asked to preach
at an ordination and on this day his remarkable gift for preaching was
discovered. He had a tremendous knowledge of the Bible but was able to
preach in a way that captivated people whether they were learned or
simple. After hearing him, St Francis asked him to teach theology at
Padua and Bologna. Later he also preached and taught in France. In 1227
he was elected provincial of Northern Italy and spent much of his time
visiting the friaries under his care. During these three years he wrote
the Sermons for
Sundays and became a member of a commission sent to Rome to
discuss the Franciscan Rule and Testament of St Francis. In Rome his
preaching was called 'a jewel case of the Bible'. St Antony returned to
Padua for the last months of his life, which were devoted to hearing
confessions, preaching and helping people in debt. He died at Arcela in
1231, but was buried at the church of Our Lady in Padua. He was
canonised just a year after his death. In 1946 he was made a Doctor of
the Church. Many miracles were attributed to his intercession and he is
often invoked as the finder of lost articles. St Antony was a
charismatic preacher and his cult has always been immensely popular.
Artists often depict him with animals, preaching to fish, or with a
lily carrying the child Jesus seated on a book. He is a patron saint of
Brazil. (Saints)
Jesus said to his
disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the
prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. Amen, I say to
you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the
smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have
taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these
commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the
Kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”(Matthew 5:17-19)
In the first
sentence of today’s Gospel passage our Lord tells his disciples not to
think that he has come to abolish the law or the prophets. Presumably
he told them this because many of them were beginning to think that he
had come to do this — perhaps they thought this because of accusations
of the religious
leaders of the people. Christ’s doctrine appeared to be very new, and
was very different from what the scribes, the Pharisees and other religious leaders
were teaching. Moreover, our Lord unhesitatingly asserted his authority
to teach in his own right because he was sent by the Father. But our
Lord makes it clear here that his newness consisted not in abolishing
but in the radical and total fulfilment of the law and the prophets
which he was inaugurating. In him the Kingdom of God had come and with
that Kingdom would come the fulfilment of all that the Scriptures asked
and called for from man. But let us notice in our Lord’s
words his emphasis on the fulfilment of the detail of the commandments
of God. “Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the
smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the
law, until all things have taken place.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and
teaches others
to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven” (Matthew
5:17-19).
One of the greatest sets of spiritual writing in English is that
contained in the Plain
and Parochial Sermons of John Henry Newman,
written in the second quarter of the nineteenth century while he was
still an Anglican clergyman. His principal preoccupation is Christian
holiness, and he makes it clear that in his view an essential
note of Christian holiness is consistency. The Christian is called to
be consistently obedient to the least aspect of the will of God in the
ordinary duties of life.
It is the most
natural thing in the world to yearn to do something notable in life.
That is a good ambition if by notable is meant significant, but it
needs to be thought through carefully. The fact is that the vast
majority of people do not have the gifts nor are they circumstanced in
a way that allows them to do things that will command wide attention
and have a manifestly great effect on the course of events. In this
sense most of us are ordinary people living out ordinary lives.
Significance and value in our life and in our work is best sought for
not
in notability but in a different direction. Our Lord’s words
today in which he tells us who will be counted as being great in the
Kingdom of heaven point out this way. It consists in endeavouring
to do well and with consistency the smallest duties which God has given
us — the least of his commandments. From age to age true heroism and
greatness will lie in that direction for the great majority of people,
and the great example for all of us is the holy family of Nazareth. For
those few who attain positions of eminence and notoriety, true
greatness will also consist in fulfilling the commandments of God with
consistency and not just on notable occasions. In fact, if there is not
consistency in observing the commandments of God in little things, when
notable occasions arrive in all probability the commandments of God
inherent in those special occasions will go unfulfilled. An obvious
instance occurs when a Christian or Catholic politician is faced with
legislation that violates the commands of God as enunciated in the
Church’s teaching. If he is not faithful and obedient to God in little
duties, he will not be faithful and obedient in the great. A very
current problem is that of Catholic and Christian politicians who vote
for legislation that is not consistent with their Christian and
Catholic faith.
One of the greatest
of Christian politicians, Sir Thomas More the Chancellor of England to
King Henry VIII, was faithful to God’s commands in the big things — King Henry’s “great matter”
— because he was faithful in the little
duties of his everyday life. Life is short and eternity long. Let us
not be always pining after the greener pastures, but rather let us make
the very most of where we are. Let us make of our ordinary little
duties the seedbed of true grandeur in the sight of God. The secret
will be to fulfil the least of God’s commandments and by our example
and witness to teach others to do the same.
(E.J.Tyler)
Why does the Decalogue constitute an
organic unity?
The Ten Commandments form an organic and indivisible whole because each
commandment refers to the other commandments and to the entire
Decalogue. To break one commandment, therefore, is to violate the
entire law. (CCC 2069, 2079)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.439)
(June 14) Today let us think of Saint Dogmael
A
6th century Welsh monk, St Dogmael is thought to have lived in
Pembrokeshire and Anglesey as many places there are dedicated to him
including, St Dogmael, across the river from Cardigan. A parish in
Anglesey also bears his name. At some time in his life he moved to
Brittany, where a St Dogmeel, or St Toel still has a cult. He is said
to have founded monasteries on both sides of the Channel. St Dogmael is
invoked to help children learn to walk. (Saints)
click on arrow for video
Scripture today: 2 Cor 3:15—4:1,
3-6; Psalm 85:9ab and 10,
11-12, 13-14; Matt 5:20-26
Jesus said to his
disciples: “I tell you, unless your
righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not
enter into the Kingdom of heaven. “You have heard that it was said to
your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to
judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be
liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, Raqa, will be answerable
to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You
fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your
gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything
against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be
reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle
with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him.
Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge
will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the
last penny.” (Matthew 5:20-26)
Undoubtedly the
people looked to the scribes and the Pharisees as
more or less being the models of religious living in the life of the
nation, and it is clear that our Lord aroused their enmity because it
was obvious that he did not think they were. The point of our Lord’s
reference to them in our passage today was to emphasize that what he
expected of those aspiring to enter the Kingdom of heaven was far
greater
than what they saw in
their religious leaders. Not only is our
Lord here referring to the degree of holiness all are called to — that
it was to be greater than that which they saw in those who purported to
teach them — but also to the kind of holiness. He is referring above
all to a holiness of the heart. The commandment of God given to their
ancestors, our Lord tells them, was that they were not to kill and
whoever did kill would suffer judgment. But, our Lord tells them, God
will look severely on one whose heart is filled with anger against his
brother, even if he does not openly injure him. God observes all, even
the secret thoughts of our hearts, and the battle for holiness is to be
waged on a terrain largely out of the sight of others. We may not be
physically injuring them, but our heart may be filled with dislike and
even hatred of them. Therefore, “whoever is angry with his
brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, Raqa, will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You
fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna” (Matthew
5:20-26).
The true
disciple of Christ must therefore be continually guarding the thoughts
of his heart. As St Paul tells us in one of his Letters, let this mind
be in you that was in Christ Jesus. We are to put on the mind of Christ
by the power of his grace and our own constant interior efforts. The
Christian life is above all an interior life.
When we speak of an
“interior life” in the Christian sense we are
speaking of a life immersed in the person of Christ. At the same time,
it is to be noticed how much our Lord stresses that it concerns others.
This life immersed in Christ is a life for our brother just as his life
was for us. In the instances of “righteousness” which our Lord gives
and which he says must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees, our
Lord speaks of our attitudes to and dealings with our fellow man. We
are to think kindly of others, we are to speak kindly to others, and we
are to deal kindly with others. We are not to allow grudges and
complaints to persist and to grow. Rather we are to “be reconciled”
with our brother before we come before God in worship. How little do we
observe these demanding injunctions! How rapidly would a person advance
in Christian holiness were he to act on these words of Christ! Let us
take the plunge and seek the holiness Christ offers us and requires of
us. Very importantly, let us bear in mind who it is that is speaking to
us in this way. In our Gospel passage today our Lord draws attention to
the authority he himself has in setting forth the requirements of entry
into the Kingdom of heaven. “You have heard that it was said to your
ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to
judgment.” However, he continues, “I say to you, whoever is angry with
his brother will be liable to judgment”. While that was said to them, I
say this to you. He stresses that his word supersedes what has been
said before. It is the Son of God himself who speaks to us of what God
is asking. Let us then place ourselves in the presence of Jesus
thinking of who it is who teaches us. Let us hear his word with
profound religious submission. He calls us to a holiness of the heart,
a holiness flowing from the heart to our words and actions and to every
aspect of our daily life.
The great legacy of
the Second Vatican Council and of the
magisterium of Pope Paul VI was the call to evangelize anew the world
of our day. We must start with ourselves, and we start with what goes
on in our hearts. We must fight to ensure that God is king of our own
hearts and of everything that happens within. We must put on the mind
of Christ and in this way shall we be equipped to invite others to
enter the Kingdom which is a kingdom above all of the heart.
(E.J.Tyler)
Your prayer should be liturgical. How I would
like to see you
using the psalms and prayers from the missal, rather than private
prayers of your own choice.
(The Way,
no.86)
Why does the Decalogue enjoin
serious obligations?
It does so because the Decalogue expresses the fundamental duties
of man towards God and towards his neighbour. (CCC 2072-2073, 2081)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.440)
(June 15) Today let us think of Saints Vitus, Modestus
and Crescentia, Martyrs. The cult of these fourth century saints
is very ancient, but few facts are known about their lives. Historians
think it is probable that Modesta and Crescentia lived in Sicily, while
St Vitus came from Lucania. According to tradition, St Vitus became
Christian as a child, during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian.
Modesta and Crescentia were his tutor and nurse. He soon gained a
reputation for holiness and the power to work miracles. The Roman
authorities tried to convert him back to paganism, but he refused to
give up his faith. On one occasion when he was thrown to a hungry lion,
he stroked the animal and it licked him affectionately. St Vitus is a
patron of epileptics and those suffering from other seizures such as
Sydenham's Chorea (St Vitus' Dance). He also protects against poisoning
by dog or snake bite and is a patron of dancers and actors. Most
mediaeval abbeys in England celebrated St Vitus without Crescentia. An
ancient church in Rome on the Esquilline is dedicated to him. His
relics were claimed by Saint-Denis in Paris and Corvey in Saxony. (Saints)
Jesus addressed
this parable to the Pharisees and scribes: "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." (Luke 15:3-7)
It has often been
pointed out that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus encapsulates in
an
image the essence of the Christian religion. That image is the heart of
Christ on fire with love for sinners. On various occasions Our Lord
referred to his heart: “Come to me” he said, “... and learn from me for
I am meek and humble of heart.” In
these words Christ invites us to contemplate his sacred heart. It is
the heart of God, God made man. Ever since God became man, our path to
God is through the man Jesus. No one comes to the Father, our Lord told
his disciples, except through me. That is to say, our path to the heart
of God lies through the heart of Christ, and by being one with the
heart of Christ we are one with the heart of God. The most complete
revelation of the heart of Christ and therefore of God is surely the
pierced heart of Christ on the cross. There on the cross Christ was
pierced with the lance, and from his heart flowed blood and water
symbolizing the Church and her life. God is love, as St John tells us
in his Letter and as Pope Benedict XVI stresses in his first
Encyclical. This love of God made present and revealed in the person of
Christ is symbolized in the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which we
celebrate today. The particular form of this devotion that became
so widespread among the Catholic faithful in modern times arose and
spread as a counter to the forbidding and distant image of Christ and
God characteristic of Jansenism. The fact is that Scripture bears
constant and eloquent testimony to the familiarity, the love and the
total accessibility of Christ, the revelation of the Father. Christ
came to love and to be loved, and in this he was revealing the desire
and the plan of the great and infinite God. God wants to be our
intimate friend. As Christ puts it, I have not called you servants, but
friends. This is what God is like, and this is what we celebrate in the
Sacred Heart of Jesus.
But there is a
corollary to this which is of maximum importance. When Scripture and
the Church’s Tradition stress that the great and triune God is a God of
love whose heart yearns for our friendship, what is especially being
stressed is that this love of God is a love for sinners. God loves
those who offend him by their sin, and he is prepared to go to any
length to reclaim us from our sins so as to unite us to himself in
friendship. For all the love which God has for us, the one thing that
alienates us from him is our deliberate sin. But we must pray for the
grace to remember that however much we sin, God loves sinners.
Therefore the sinner can turn to him in repentance and ask for
forgiveness. Great as was the sin of Judas, the more terrible thing
which he did was that he did not come back to Christ (as did Simon
Peter after having denied him) in repentance, seeking his love and
forgiveness. The love of God is an infinitely merciful love. It shows
itself in mercy. This is why our Gospel passage today (Luke 15:3-7) is so important for each
of us. Christ describes himself as the man who leaves the ninety-nine
sheep in the wilderness and goes after the stray. That stray sheep is
each of us, to a greater or lesser extent. To one degree or another we
have strayed from God and God has come after us. He continues seeking
us out in every nook and cranny where our sins, whether they be serious
or venial, lead us. The one thing that takes us from God is sin, and
when sin takes us from God, God comes looking for us. But we must be
prepared to be taken up by him, placed on his shoulders, and brought
back to life in him through repentance. We must be prepared to accept
the summons of our conscience to repent and to return with genuine
resolve to his love. That must be going on continually in our life,
daily. Consider what our Lord says about the repentance of the sinner!
It causes more joy in heaven than does the fidelity of the rest.
Let us then guard
in our hearts a true image of the eternal and triune God. Christ is the
image of the unseen God, and he has revealed to us his sacred and
adorable heart. It is a heart filled with love and compassion for
sinful man. Let us recognize ourselves as counted among sinful men, and
accept from Christ his merciful love. Knowing that we are loved by
Christ let us then enter into his mission of saving souls from sin by
bringing them also to the heart of Christ.
(E.J.Tyler)
Letter of his Holiness Benedict XVI On occasion of the 50th
anniversary of the encyclical "Haurietis
Aquas" (May 15, 2006)
Today, 50 years later, the Prophet Isaiah's words, which Pius XII
placed at the beginning of the Encyclical with which he commemorated
the first centenary of the extension of the Feast of the Most Sacred
Heart of Jesus to the entire Church, have lost none of their meaning:
"With joy you will draw water from the
wells of salvation" (Is 12: 3).
By encouraging devotion to the Heart of Jesus, the Encyclical Haurietis
Aquas exhorted believers to open themselves to the mystery of God and
of his love and to allow themselves to be transformed by it. After 50
years, it is still a fitting task for Christians to continue to deepen
their relationship with the Heart of Jesus, in such a way as to revive
their faith in the saving love of God and to welcome him ever better
into their lives.
The Redeemer's pierced side is the source to which the Encyclical
Haurietis Aquas refers us: we must draw from this source to attain true
knowledge of Jesus Christ and a deeper experience of his love.
Thus, we will be able to understand better what it means to know God's
love in Jesus Christ, to experience him, keeping our gaze fixed on him
to the point that we live entirely on the experience of his love, so
that we can subsequently witness to it to others.
Indeed, to take up a saying of my venerable Predecessor John Paul II,
"In the Heart of Christ, man's heart learns to know the genuine and
unique meaning of his life and of his destiny, to understand the value
of an authentically Christian life, to keep himself from certain
perversions of the human heart, and to unite the filial love for God
and the love of neighbour".
Thus: "The true reparation asked by the Heart of the Saviour will come
when the civilization of the Heart of Christ can be built upon the
ruins heaped up by hatred and violence" (Letter to Fr Peter-Hans
Kolvenbach, Superior General of the Society of Jesus for the
Beatification of Bl. Claude de la Colombière, 5 October 1986;
L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 27 October 1986, p. 7).
In the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, I cited the affirmation in the
First Letter of St John: "We have come to know and to believe in the
love God has for us", in order to emphasize that being Christian begins
with the encounter with a Person (cf. n. 1).
Since God revealed himself most profoundly in the Incarnation of his
Son in whom he made himself "visible", it is in our relationship with
Christ that we can recognize who God really is (cf. Haurietis Aquas,
nn. 29-41; Deus Caritas Est, nn. 12-15).
And again: since the deepest expression of God's love is found in the
gift Christ made of his life for us on the Cross, the deepest
expression of God's love, it is above all by looking at his suffering
and his death that we can see God's infinite love for us more and more
clearly: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (Jn 3:
16).
Moreover, not only does this mystery of God's love for us constitute
the content of the worship of and devotion to the Heart of Jesus, but
in the same way it is likewise the content of all true spirituality and
Christian devotion. It is consequently important to stress that the
basis of the devotion is as old as Christianity itself.
Indeed, it is only possible to be Christian by fixing our gaze on the
Cross of our Redeemer, "on him whom they have pierced" (Jn 19: 37; cf.
Zc 12: 10).
The Encyclical Haurietis Aquas rightly recalls that for countless souls
the wound in Christ's side and the marks left by the nails have been
"the chief sign and symbol of that love" that ever more incisively
shaped their life from within (cf. n. 52).
Recognizing God's love in the Crucified One became an inner experience
that prompted them to confess, together with Thomas: "My Lord and my
God!" (Jn 20: 28), and enabled them to acquire a deeper faith by
welcoming God's love unreservedly (cf. Haurietis Aquas, n. 49).
The deepest meaning of this devotion to God's love is revealed solely
through a more attentive consideration of its contribution not only to
the knowledge, but also and especially to the personal experience of
this love in trusting dedication to its service (cf. ibid., n. 62).
It is obvious that experience and knowledge cannot be separated: the
one refers to the other. Moreover, it is essential to emphasize that
true knowledge of God's love is only possible in the context of an
attitude of humble prayer and generous availability.
Starting with this interior attitude, one sees that the gaze fixed upon
his side, pierced by the spear, is transformed into silent adoration.
Gazing at the Lord's pierced side, from which "blood and water" flowed
(cf. Jn 19: 34), helps us to recognize the manifold gifts of grace that
derive from it (cf. Haurietis Aquas, nn. 34-41) and opens us to all
other forms of Christian worship embraced by the devotion to the Heart
of Jesus.
Faith, understood as a fruit of the experience of God's love, is a
grace, a gift of God. Yet human beings will only be able to experience
faith as a grace to the extent that they accept it within themselves as
a gift on which they seek to live. Devotion to the love of God, to
which the Encyclical Haurietis Aquas invited the faithful (cf. n. 72),
must help us never to forget that he willingly took this suffering upon
himself "for us", "for me".
When we practise this devotion, not only do we recognize God's love
with gratitude but we continue to open ourselves to this love so that
our lives are ever more closely patterned upon it. God, who poured out
his love "into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to
us" (cf. Rom 5: 5), invites us tirelessly to accept his love. The main
aim of the invitation to give ourselves entirely to the saving love of
Christ and to consecrate ourselves to it (cf. Haurietis Aquas, n. 4)
is, consequently, to bring about our relationship with God.
This explains why the devotion, which is totally oriented to the love
of God who sacrificed himself for us, has an irreplaceable importance
for our faith and for our life in love.
Whoever inwardly accepts God is moulded by him. The experience of God's
love should be lived by men and women as a "calling" to which they must
respond. Fixing our gaze on the Lord, who "took our infirmities and
bore our diseases" (Mt 8: 17), helps us to become more attentive to the
suffering and need of others.
Adoring contemplation of the side pierced by the spear makes us
sensitive to God's salvific will. It enables us to entrust ourselves to
his saving and merciful love, and at the same time strengthens us in
the desire to take part in his work of salvation, becoming his
instruments.
The gifts received from the open side, from which "blood and water"
flowed (cf. Jn 19: 34), ensure that our lives will also become for
others a source from which "rivers of living water" flow (Jn 7: 38; cf.
Deus Caritas Est, n. 7).
The experience of love, brought by the devotion to the pierced side of
the Redeemer, protects us from the risk of withdrawing into ourselves
and makes us readier to live for others. "By this we know love, that he
laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the
brethren" (I Jn 3: 16; cf. Haurietis Aquas, n. 38).
It was only the experience that God first gave us his love that has
enabled us to respond to his commandment of love (cf. Deus Caritas Est,
n. 17).
So it is that the cult of love, which becomes visible in the mystery of
the Cross presented anew in every celebration of the Eucharist, lays
the foundations of our capacity to love and to make a gift of ourselves
(cf. Haurietis Aquas, n. 69), becoming instruments in Christ's hands:
only in this way can we be credible proclaimers of his love.
However, this opening of ourselves to God's will must be renewed in
every moment: "Love is never "finished' and complete" (cf. Deus Caritas
Est, n. 17).
Thus, looking at the "side pierced by the spear" from which shines
forth God's boundless desire for our salvation cannot be considered a
transitory form of worship or devotion: the adoration of God's love,
whose historical and devotional expression is found in the symbol of
the "pierced heart", remains indispensable for a living relationship
with God (cf. Haurietis Aquas, n. 62).
Is it possible to keep the Decalogue?
Yes, because Christ without whom we can do nothing enables us to keep
it with the gift of his Spirit and his grace. (CCC 2074, 2082)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.441)
(June
16) Today let us think of St. John Francis Regis
Jesuit priest. Born near Narbonne in 1597, John Francis Regis was the
son of a well-to-do merchant. He joined the Jesuits at 18 and was
ordained in 1631. From that time he began running missions in the very
poor rural areas of the Auvergne and Languedoc. A tireless preacher,
many people were converted by him. He made great efforts to help
prisoners and prostitutes — with little support from his superiors. He
also set up many Confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament. St John
Regis died 1640, while preaching a mission at La Louvesc in Dauphine.
He was canonised in 1737. His shrine there is still visited by many
thousands each year.
(Saints)
Each year
Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he
was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After
they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus
remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking
that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him
among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they
returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him
in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them
and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his
understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were
astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to
us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”
And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know
that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what
he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was
obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.(Luke
2:41-51)
There are many
tragedies in human life, but perhaps the saddest of all is when as a
result of such tragedies a person turns his back on God and either
refuses to believe that he exists, or refuses to believe that he is
good and trustworthy. Some dear member of his family suffers and dies — say, a child
— and the loss is absolutely devastating. How could, or
rather why did, God allow this? People are killed, lives are
accidentally lost, one’s savings are culpably squandered by others,
whatever it be, there will be the
temptation to think that
there is no God or that God is bad. Behind this is the refusal or
inability to accept that the God of all things is far larger than the
capacity of our own minds to encompass. Why do things turn out the way
they do? The believer and especially the Christian has learnt to
believe that a good God holds all in his hands, and so he trusts in
faith and discerns amid the darkness the signs of the divine presence.
God’s is a kind and caring presence amid the mysteries. The heart of a
Christian is a heart that trusts God and his revelation of himself,
despite the appearances. Of himself he does not know why there is such
a discordance between this revelation and what he sees in the world. In
this he trusts. He trusts in the revelation that has come from God. He
trusts, whatever be the darkness. Well now, today we think of the
utterly sinless heart of Mary the mother of the Son of God made man.
There have been two persons in human history who have been utterly good
without any trace of evil in their hearts: Jesus Christ — and through
the grace and merits of Jesus Christ, Mary his mother. Their hearts
were immaculate in holiness, Mary’s being a limpid reflection of that
of her Son’s. Today we think of the immaculate heart of Mary. Yet
despite her incomparable goodness from a purely human perspective many
things went badly for her, the
crowning instance of this being the awesome and indescribable
sufferings and death of her son.
Our Gospel
scene today is a case in point, and we meditate on it when we pray the
fifth Joyful mystery of the Rosary. It is a joyful mystery because the
three days of anxiety ended in joy, just as the passion and death of
Jesus her son ended in the joy of the resurrection and ascension.
Coming back from the feast Jesus and his parents were separated and it
was only after a day’s journey they discovered he was missing. Imagine
the anxiety that filled the holy hearts of Mary and Joseph, the
darkness and the perplexity (Luke
2:41-51).
They had before them the responsibility they had been given from on
high of caring for and raising the Messiah, the hope of the world. He
was the love of their life, and they knew the divine richness of his
Person — but he was gone! The three days of search were three days of
indescribable darkness and in this not uncommon human event is surely
symbolized the darkness and mystery enveloping much of the great stream
of ordinary human life. The ordinary Everyman suffers disappointment,
perplexity and frustration very often. In Mary the sinless one, the
Everyman has a
model and mother. In her he has a mother who suffered the same
uncertainties and anxieties, the same things that seemed to turn out
badly. Yet she trusted. She believed in the good God and her faith
never wavered though it did not understand. In celebrating the
immaculate heart of Mary we remember that however badly things went
from a human point of view, she never turned from God in the least
sense. Darkness led to a great and more heroic trust. Moreover, in
thinking of her immaculate heart, we think of the importance of the
will. Though in very many things she did not understand yet in her will
she remained trusting and faithful. We are reminded that the
disposition of the heart and will is of greater importance than the
understanding possessed by the mind.
Let us glory
in the gift Christ has made to us of his own mother. On the cross he
saw before him his mother, immaculate in her sinlessness and ever
trusting in the darkness. Her heart trusted in God and never failed
him. She was mankind’s woman of faith without compare. In her we have
our model of what it means to live in a world so often groaning amid
darkness, a world whose true light is the person of Christ and his
ineffable revelation.
You seek the company of friends who, with
their conversation and affection, with their friendship, make the exile
of this world more bearable for you. There is nothing wrong with that,
although friends sometimes let you down.
But how is it you don't frequent daily with greater intensity the
company, the conversation, of the great Friend, who never lets you down?
(The Way,
no.88)
What is implied in the affirmation of God:
“I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:2)?
This
means that the faithful must guard and activate the three theological
virtues and must avoid sins which are opposed to them. Faith believes
in God and rejects everything that is opposed to it, such as,
deliberate doubt, unbelief, heresy, apostasy, and schism. Hope
trustingly awaits the blessed vision of God and his help, while
avoiding despair and presumption. Charity loves God above all things
and therefore repudiates indifference, ingratitude, lukewarmness, sloth
or spiritual indolence, and that hatred of God which is born of pride.
(CCC 2083-2094, 2133-2134)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.442)
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 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. (Saints)
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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
Two things characterised the sinful woman who wept at the feet of Jesus.
Firstly, she was conscious of her sins and she was truly sorry for them. But
together with this she was also confident in Christ’s love. She knew she
could approach him in confidence, and she sensed that he would give her the
forgiveness of God. By the grace of God that has justified us we are
children of God. All our lives we should be growing in a sorrow for our sins
which we ought acknowledge in acts of contrition and in the Sacrament of
Penance. But together with this we ought be growing in a full and loving
confidence in the mercy of God who will forgive our sins and continue to
abide within us. Dwelling in us by grace, and sustaining our efforts to
cooperate with him, he gradually sanctifies us by transforming us into the
image of Jesus Christ.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1987-1995, Justification.
'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)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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)
(June
18) The Venerable Matt Talbot
Matt Talbot can be considered the patron of men and women struggling
with alcoholism. Born in Dublin, in 1856, his father worked on the
docks and had a difficult time supporting his family. After a few years
of schooling, Matt obtained work as a messenger for some liquor
merchants; there he began to drink excessively and soon became an
alcoholic. For 15 years, until he was 30, he drank heavily. But one day
he decided to take 'the pledge' for three months, make a general
confession and begin to attend daily Mass. There is evidence that
Matt's first seven years after taking the pledge were especially
difficult. Avoiding his former drinking places was hard. He began to
pray as intensely as he used to drink. He also tried to pay back people
from whom he had borrowed or stolen money while he was drinking. Most
of his life Matt worked as a builder's labourer. He joined the Secular
Franciscan Order and from then on began a life of strict penance. He
abstained from meat nine months a year and spent hours every night
reading the Bible and the lives of the saints. He also prayed the
rosary regularly. Though his job did not make him rich, Matt
contributed generously to the missions. After 1923 his health failed
and Matt had to quit his job. He died two years later on his way to
church on Trinity Sunday. In 1973 Pope Paul VI gave him the title
Venerable. (Saints)
Jesus said to his
disciples: “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is
evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one
to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic,
hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for
one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you,
and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.” (Matthew 5:38-42)
For much of the
modern era the key to peace in the world has been seen to lie in a
balance of powers. That is to say, it has been thought by great
strategists that the best hope of maintaining world order lies in arming
oneself to such an extent that the other person would fear the
consequences of attacking you. Any aggression should then be followed
up by a punishing counter-attack. It means that peace is basically forged by force and
mutual fear, accompanied by efforts to build a climate of trust and
mutual esteem. I remember seeing two large dogs facing one another at
very close quarters. The bigger dog hesitated because he sensed that
the other dog was smaller, but still powerful. The smaller dog knew
that the other was larger, and so he too hesitated. Neither made the
first move because of fear and the perceived possession of force in the
other. A balance of powers kept the two dogs back from aggression
because of a fear of the consequences. Not long back an Australian was
falsely accused of murder in an African country, and had he been
convicted he would have suffered the same fate as the supposed victim — in this case it would have been hanging because the one who died (as it
turned out, by suicide) was found hanging. The judicial system of the
country threatened lawbreakers with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth. There is no doubt that in a fallen world there is a certain
strategic wisdom in this. After all, even the doctrine of eternal
punishment has the effect of holding very many people back from secret
or open wrongdoing. Fear of a great and hostile force bringing
retribution after death keeps many persons in check. All this helps us
to understand the Old Testament injunction which our Lord quotes in our
Gospel today, that there is to be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth. Punishment was proportionate to the crime, and the thought of
this judgment and punishment was deemed to keep crime in check — and it
probably did.
Our Lord
mysteriously transcends this principle of action. He says to his
disciples, “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one
who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the
other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over
your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into
service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who
asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.” (Matthew
5:38-42) How
are we to interpret this, for it would seem that to take such
injunctions to their logical conclusions would involve the collapse of
order in society. Consider the state of lawlessness in Gaza and the
West Bank (2007) and in parts of Lebanon, and in many other parts of
the world. The wicked man must be resisted and in so very many cases it
is only the threat of imminent and enforceable sanctions which
restrains certain persons. Our passage today serves to remind us that
in interpreting our Lord’s teaching as given in the Gospels we must
bear in mind a few considerations. Firstly, his teaching is best seen
by the light of his own example. He is the embodiment of all that he
taught, and the Christian is to imitate him in all things. The key to
understanding, say, the beatitudes, is to interpret them in the light
of Christ’s own life. Christ’s teaching throws light on his own person
and practice, and his life and practice throws light on his teaching.
Furthermore, we must consider his teaching in one part of the Gospels
in light of his teaching in other parts. For instance, Christ says that
whatever we ask for we shall receive, at the same time we remember that
when James and John approached him to ask for first places in his glory
he said they did not know what they were asking, and that this request
was not for him to grant. Most importantly, our Lord’s teaching must be
considered in the light of the Church’s Tradition because that is the
truest key to the interpretation of the Scriptures. We read the
Scriptures with the mind of the living Church, guided as it is by the
Spirit of truth .
Let us for the
moment simply say this. In our response to evil and injury let us take
Christ as our model. Let us contemplate the person of Jesus Christ,
penetrate his mind and heart with the aid of God’s grace, and resolve
to strive to be like him in all things. Let this mind be in you that
was in Christ Jesus, St Paul wrote. While Christ wishes us to defend
ourselves and others from unjust aggression and harm, he wants us to
build up a civilization not of force and fear but of love. Let us
strive to overcome evil with good, and hate with love. Christ is the
way for every man.
(E.J.Tyler)
You say that you don't know how to pray? Put yourself in the
presence of God, and once you have said, 'Lord, I don't know how to
pray!' rest assured that you have begun to do so.
(The Way,
no.90
In what way does a person
exercise his or her proper right to worship God in truth and in freedom?
Every
person has the right and the moral duty to seek the truth, especially
in what concerns God and his Church. Once the truth is known,
each person he has the right and moral duty to embrace it, to guard it
faithfully and to render God authentic worship. At the same time, the
dignity of the human person requires that in religious matters no one
may be forced to act against conscience nor be restrained, within the
just limits of public order, from acting in conformity with conscience,
privately or publicly, alone or in association with others. (CCC
2104-2109, 2137)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.444)
(June
19) Saint
Romuald, Benedictine abbot. Born at Ravenna in about 950
Romuald
is said to have fled the world in horror after his father killed a man
in a duel. He joined the Cluniac monks, but after years of study became
attracted to a life of solitary prayer. He eventually left the
monastery and walked from place to place, founding many hermitages and
communities. The most important of these was Fonte Avellana and
Camaldoli, on a wooded mountainside in Tuscany. Romuald was a powerful
influence in the medieval church. His order of hermit monks, was very
austere and always had very few members, but survives to this day as an
independent order of Benedictines, called the Camaldolese monks.
Romuald made repeated attempts to undertake missionary work among the
Magyars and Slavs. He died on this day in 1027 at Val de Castro near
Camaldoli. (Saints)
Jesus said to his
disciples: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your
neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your
heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and
causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those
who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors
do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about
that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your
heavenly Father is perfect.”(Matthew 5:43-48)
I suppose we could
say that it is not hard to see the sense in the injunction which our
Lord refers to in our Gospel passage today, when he says “you have
heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbour and hate your
enemy.” That is to say, if you must hate anyone, do not hate your
neighbour. Let it be only your enemy (i.e., the one who hates you).
Moreover, if the manifestation of so-called “hatred” is vigorous resistance to those who
oppress and seek to harm you, then “hate” the one who is doing that to
you for of course you must defend your rights. He and he alone is your
“enemy”. Now, even this directive of limited grandeur is scarcely
observed in so much of human society. Even one’s “neighbour” is hated
in so many cases. So often brothers and sisters do not talk to one
another, and spouses break up in anger and life-long resentment. Whole
communities in the Middle East and in other parts of the world are at
this point rent with warring divisions. Brother is hating brother, and
neighbour his neighbour. So the Old Testament directive that one must
love one’s neighbour, and hate only one’s enemy was of manifest good
sense and not to be taken for granted. But now, Christ sets forth his
stunning teaching which is the test of true discipleship. He says that
we are to love not only our brothers but even our enemies. In respect
to those who persecute us, we are not to “hate” them but even to pray
for them. (Matthew 5:43-48) Let us remember that
our Lord is here speaking of a religion of the heart, and his command
reaches to the heart. It will not be enough to treat our enemy civilly.
No, we must love and pray for him, and God who sees all will see what
is going on in our hearts. I wonder how many bear grudges all their
lives, grudges that begin in their youth and are never ever given up.
They accompany the person through life and go with them into death and
beyond. I wonder how many persons never forgive and never learn to love
those who have harmed them.
Our Lord has a
severe warning: it is that it will be dealt to us in the measure that
we have dealt to others. Our Lord finishes one parable in the Gospels
by saying that “that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you
unless you each forgive your brother from your heart.” So we must make
the life-long and vigilant effort to forgive and to love those who have
hurt us. Our memories have to be sanctified and made a fit home for the
Holy Spirit, and it is his grace that will enable us to do this. The
point is that not only is this a matter of coming reward or punishment,
it is what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Christ’s heart was full
of love. He forgave his enemies and he loved them and prayed for them.
On the Cross he prayed for those who had put him there and who
continued to revile him. This prayer for their pardon expressed what
constantly filled his heart, and it is the sentiment which we should
strive to ensure fills our hearts also. St Paul says in one of
his Letters that we are to let this mind be in us that was in Christ
Jesus. Christ’s “mind” is humility, it is love, it is pardon and
forgiveness, it is meekness, together with an almighty strength. In all
of this he reflects and reveals the love of the Father, and our Lord in
our Gospel passage today makes the point that it is only if we are
prepared to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us that
we will be true children of our Father in heaven. He does this
continually “for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and
causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” God is pure love, and
if only human society could strive to be like the loving Father of all,
as he reveals himself in his son Jesus Christ! Let us who accept Jesus
Christ as our Lord and as the Lord of all take love, the love of
Christ, the love which he manifested and which he reveals as of the
Father, let us take this love as our rule of life.
Our Lord tells us
that if we wish to be his disciples we must “be perfect” as our
heavenly Father is perfect. It will mean loving our
enemies and praying for those who persecute or harm us.
We are to strive for the
perfection of love, that divine love which has been poured into our
hearts at our baptism by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit abides with
us to bring this about. It is the project of life, and in it Christ is
our Master and our Model.
(E.J.Tyler)
You write: 'To pray is to talk with God. But
about what?' About what? About Him, about yourself: joys, sorrows,
successes and failures, noble ambitions, daily worries, weaknesses! And
acts of thanksgiving and petitions: and Love and reparation.
In a word: to get to know him and to get to know yourself: 'to get
acquainted!'
(The Way, no.91)
What does God prohibit by his command,
“You shall not have other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2)? This commandment forbids:
* Polytheism and idolatry, which divinizes
creatures, power, money, or even demons.
* Superstition which is a departure from the worship
due to the true God and which also expresses itself in various forms of
divination, magic, sorcery and spiritism.
* Irreligion which is evidenced: in tempting God by
word or deed; in sacrilege, which profanes sacred persons or sacred
things, above all the Eucharist; and in simony, which involves the
buying or selling of spiritual things.
* Atheism which rejects the existence of God,
founded often on a false conception of human autonomy.
* Agnosticism which affirms that nothing can be
known about God, and involves indifferentism and practical
atheism. (CCC 2110-2128, 2138-2140)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.445)
(June
20) Today let us think of
Saint Alban
The first martyr of Britain.
This early saint was a Romano-Briton, living in Verulamium (now the
city of St Albans). During the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian
he is said to have sheltered a Christian priest, St Amphilbalus, who
baptised him. When soldiers came looking for the priest, Alban dressed
in his clothes to help him escape. He was arrested and after refusing
to offer sacrifice, was killed by beheading in 209. One executioner was
converted. Alban was beheaded by another (whose eyes are said in one
story to have fallen out after the event). The cult of St Alban
extended all over England and parts of France. Many churches were
dedicated to him. Several shrines were built to him through the ages,
making the city of St Albans a great pilgrimage centre. His last shrine
in the cathedral was partly destroyed during the Reformation, but has
been painstakingly restored. The ancient shrine of St Amphilbalus, said
to have evangelised St Alban, is also in the cathedral.
(Saints)
Jesus said to his
disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that
people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your
heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you,
as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the
praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right
is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who
sees in secret will repay you. “When you pray, do not be like the
hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street
corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have
received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close
the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees
in secret will repay you. “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the
hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to
others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their
reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that
you may not appear to others to be fasting, except to your Father who
is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”(Matthew
6:1-6, 16-18)
One of the very
notable features of our world is the coming together of widely
disparate societies and cultures. The world has become a village, a
global village in which all see one another regularly and therefore
must get on with one another. The differences between societies and
cultures and religions are noticed more clearly and discussed more
frequently. One aspect of this discussion is the dominance of the West.
How is it that the West has over the past six hundred years or so
attained to such a forceful pre-eminence over the
societies of the world? Of course, much of this has to do with the
galloping attainments of Western science and technology — but this
observation just pushes the question back further to the reason for the
Western mastery of science and technology. This is an intricate issue,
but surely one reason is that Western culture has over a long period of
time learnt — perhaps due somewhat to the Christian religion — to take
the world very seriously. The world is not just the plaything of unseen
higher powers but has been given its own very solid laws which are to
be discovered and stewarded. But now, one corollary of all this — and
this is my point — is that the West tends to live only in this very
solid observable world and to forget the unseen Reality on which it
depends. From out of the attainments of the West has come the
temptation to secularism and atheism. The supernatural tends to be
ignored and then denied. We live in view of this world only and in view
simply of those around us. This, of course is man’s temptation from age
to age, but it has over the last millennium become a special temptation
for the Western civilization and because of the spread of Western
culture it has become the temptation of the modern world. So it is that
our Lord’s injunction to us in today’s Gospel that we must live out our
religious life before the gaze not of men but of our heavenly Father is
extremely apposite to modern man.
Our Lord’s words
call us to live genuinely in the presence of the Unseen, which is to
say in the presence of our heavenly Father, the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. For us moderns the world is extremely real and the
supernatural tends to be extremely remote. Hence we must make special
efforts to live our religious with a lively sense of the constant
presence of God, that God who has revealed himself in and through the
person of Jesus Christ. I remember many years ago in my youth hearing a
priest insist repeatedly on the dangers of human respect. I tend to
think it is a principal danger of modern religion, and one therefore
that attracts the warnings of our Lord in today’s Gospel. We must be on
guard lest we do things to attract the approval of men and so lose
sight of the one thing that matters, that we gain the approval of God.
For, as the Gospel makes clear elsewhere, what does it profit a man if
he gains the whole world and suffers the ruin of his life and soul? As
our Lord tells us in today’s Gospel, “Take care not to perform
righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will
have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do
not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues
and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you,
they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let
your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving
may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you”
(Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18). Our Lord is assuming
that we shall give alms, that we shall do penance, and that we
shall pray, but he is requiring of us that we do all that we do in our
religious life for the gaze and approval of our heavenly Father, and
not for the gaze and approval of men. What is at stake is the presence
in our life of true religion rather than a mere counterfeit. Let us resolve to
cultivate a profound sense of the presence of God. He is indeed present
to us in our innermost being because he is our Creator and Lord — and
if we are in the state of grace he abides within us in the fullness of
his triune life. But our temptation will be to live as if the only
reality is the world in which we live and the persons around us. We
will tend to forget the God who is far more real and present to us than
anyone or anything we see before us. Let us then not forget God, but
rather constantly remember that it is in his sight that we live and
move and have our being.
(E.J.Tyler)
'Et in meditatione mea exardescit ignis. And
in my meditation a fire shall flame out.' That is why you go to pray:
to become a bonfire, a living flame giving heat and light.
So, when you are not able to go on, when you feel that your fire is
dying out, if you cannot throw on it sweet— smelling logs, throw on the
branches and twigs of short vocal prayers and ejaculations, to keep the
bonfire burning. And you will not have wasted your time.
(The Way,
no.92)
Does the commandment of God,
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image” (Exodus 20:3), forbid
the cult of images?
In
the Old Testament this commandment forbade any representation of God
who is absolutely transcendent. The Christian veneration of sacred
images, however, is justified by the incarnation of the Son of God (as
taught by the Second Council of Nicea in 787AD) because such veneration
is founded on the mystery of the Son of God made man, in whom the
transcendent God is made visible. This does not mean the adoration of
an image, but rather the veneration of the one who is represented in
it: for example, Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angels and the
Saints. (CCC2129-2132, 2141
)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.446)
(June 21) Saint
Aloysius Gonzaga, religious
(1568-1591) Jesuit Seminarian.
Patron of youth. The Lord can make saints anywhere, even
amid the brutality and license of Renaissance life. Florence was the
“mother of piety” for Aloysius Gonzaga despite his exposure to a
“society of fraud, dagger, poison and lust.” Born in 1568 near
Mantua in
Lombardy. As a son of a princely family, he grew
up in royal courts and army camps. His father wanted Aloysius to be a
military hero. At age seven he experienced a profound spiritual
quickening. His prayers included the Office of Mary, the psalms and
other devotions. At age nine he came from his hometown of Castiglione
to Florence to be educated; by age 11 he was teaching catechism to poor
children, fasting three days a week and practicing great austerities.
When he was 13 years old he traveled with his parents and the Empress
of Austria to Spain and acted as a page in the court of Philip II. The
more Aloysius saw of court life, the more disillusioned he became,
seeking relief in learning about the lives of saints. A book about the
experience of Jesuit missionaries in India suggested to him the idea of
entering the Society of Jesus, and in Spain his decision became final.
Now began a four-year contest with his father. Eminent churchmen and
laypeople were pressed into service to persuade him to remain in his
“normal” vocation. Finally he prevailed, was allowed to renounce his
right to succession and was received into the Jesuit novitiate. Like
other seminarians, Aloysius was faced with a new kind of penance—that
of accepting different ideas about the exact nature of penance. He was
obliged to eat more, to take recreation with the other students. He was
forbidden to pray except at stated times. He spent four years in the
study of philosophy and had St. Robert Bellarmine as his spiritual
adviser. In 1591, a plague struck Rome. The Jesuits opened a hospital
of their own. The general himself and many other Jesuits rendered
personal service. Because he nursed patients, washing them and making
their beds, Aloysius caught the disease himself. A fever persisted
after his recovery and he was so weak he could scarcely rise from bed.
Yet, he maintained his great discipline of prayer, knowing that he
would die within the octave of Corpus Christi, three months later. He
was 23.
(Saints) St Mewan
A 6th century abbot, St Mewan was born in South Wales. The account goes
that he was a disciple of Samson and a companion of St Austell.
Together they migrated from Wales to Brittany, through Cornwall,
setting up churches along the way. Mewan founded one monastery in the
forest of Broceliande and another in a place now called Saint-Mean. The
cult of St Mewan spread all over France and there were once many
pilgrimages to his shrine. He is patron of St Mewan and Mevagissey in
Cornwall. Some of his relics are said to be at Glastonbury.
Jesus said to his
disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that
they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. “This is how you
are to pray: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy
Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us
this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil.’ “If you forgive others their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive
others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”(Matthew 6:7-15)
If prayer is of the
essence of religion and therefore of life, how precious is any teaching
about prayer coming from the Son of God himself! Such is the teaching
of our Gospel passage today. The Lord’s Prayer has occasioned unending
commentary from generation to generation in the life of the Church, and
in the Church’s great catechisms it constitutes the framework and basis
of the Church’s doctrine on prayer. The Catechism of the
Catholic
Church, as well as its accompanying Compendium, are
the latest instances of this. But
now, in our thought for today let us notice our Lord’s introductory
comment on the prayer he teaches his disciples. It surely provides the
initial emphasis he wishes to give. Our Lord tells his disciples that
“In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be
heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father
knows what you need before you ask him.” Our Lord describes the long
prayers of many of the pagans as “babble”. We might perhaps think of
that famous scene in the Old Testament when the prophet Elijah
confronts the four hundred prophets of Baal and invites them to prepare
their sacrifice in the presence of the people. Then they were to call
on their god to consume the sacrifice. So they prayed and prayed and
struck themselves calling on their god to do something, but nothing
happened. Elijah taunted them saying that their god was asleep or had
gone away. Elijah then in a few words called on Yahweh to accept his
sacrifice and thus to vindicate his name. At this, the fire of Yahweh
fell and consumed the sacrifice. Elijah’s prayer was spectacularly
simple and full of overflowing faith. He knew that God was aware of
what he wanted, and he knew that God would answer the prayer. Our Lord
teaches us that our prayer to God our heavenly Father is to be full of
simple faith in his power and love, knowing that he is fully aware of
all that we need.
Let us then learn
to place ourselves in the presence of our heavenly Father as disciples
of Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son. We are children of the Father
because we are in Jesus by our Baptism. So we pray to the Father in
union with Jesus, praying as he would have us pray in all simplicity
and trust in our heavenly Father. But consider a second emphasis our
Lord gives to the Prayer he taught. The first emphasis came at the
beginning, this second emphasis is contained in his final comment on
what he has just taught them. His Prayer includes the important request
to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against
us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” We pray
for pardon for our sins, and for aid against future sin. But our Lord
immediately comments, “If you forgive others their transgressions, your
heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions” (Matthew
6:7-15).
This constitutes an awful warning because of all the requests that our
Lord places before us to present to our heavenly Father — that his name
be hallowed, that his Kingdom come and that his will be done — this
appeal for forgiveness is surely the most pressing for the one who
knows he is a sinner and who knows the evil and affront of sin. It was
because of our sins that the Son of God became man, and the Kingdom we
pray for is a Kingdom of grace and liberation from sin. Our Lord died
on the cross in order to give glory to his Father by expiating for our
sins and at his Resurrection he empowered his apostles to forgive sins.
So while this petition about our sins is the last in the Prayer, it
could be regarded as also the climax. So important is this petition
that our Lord immediately emphases it and attaches to it a solemn
warning. We must forgive others if our own request for forgiveness is
to have any hope of being heard.
Today let us
resolve to pray with simplicity in the presence of our heavenly Father,
knowing that he is fully aware of what we need before we even begin to
ask him. Let us pray as his trusting children who have faith in his
power, his love and his knowledge. Let us also constantly ask him to
pardon our sins and to preserve us from sin in the future, resolving to
be like him in pardoning all those who have trespassed against us. In a
word, let us pray as Jesus our Lord commands us to.
You are so conscious of your misery that you
acknowledge yourself unworthy to be heard by God. But, what about the
merits of Mary? And the wounds of your Lord? And... are you not a son
of God?
Besides, he listens to you quoniam bonus... because he is good, because
his mercy endures for ever.
(The Way,
no.93)
How does one respect the holiness of
the Name of God?
One shows respect for the holy Name of God by blessing it, praising it
and glorifying it. It is forbidden, therefore, to call on the Name of
God to justify a crime. It is also wrong to use the holy Name of God in
any improper way as in blasphemy (which by its nature is a grave sin),
curses, and unfaithfulness to promises made in the Name of God. (CCC
2142-2149, 2160-2162)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.447)
(June 22) Saint
Paulinus of Nola, bishop. Born at Bordeaux in France in the year
355, he rose high in public services, married and had a son. But
wishing to embrace a more austere life he received baptism, gave up his
worldly goods and in 393 he began to live the monastic life at Nola in
Campagna. He became bishop of Nola where he did much to promote the
veneration of St Felix of Nola, helping the pilgrims and doing what he
could to relieve the misery of that time. He composed a number of poems
which are outstanding for their literary quality. He died
431.
(Saints)
Also Saint John Fisher,
bishop and Cardinal martyr. John Fisher was born in the year
1469. He studied theology at the University of Cambridge in England and
was ordained priest. He was appointed Bishop of Rochester. His life was
austere and he became an outstanding pastor of his flock, often
visiting them. He was an eminent theologian and wrote against the
doctrinal errors of his time.
(Saints) Thomas More
martyr
Thomas More was born in the year 1477. He studied
at the University of Oxford, married and had a son and three daughters.
He was a great lawyer and was appointed Chancellor of the kingdom. He
wrote a number of works about civil affairs and in defence of the
Catholic religion, and some spiritual works as well. His belief that no
lay ruler has jurisdiction over the Church of Christ cost Thomas More
his life. Described as “a man for all seasons,” More was a literary
scholar, eminent lawyer, gentleman, father of four children and
chancellor of England. An intensely spiritual man, he would not support
the king’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne
Boleyn. Nor would he acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church in
England, breaking with Rome and denying the pope as head. More was
committed to the Tower of London to await trial for treason: not
swearing to the Act of Succession and the Oath of Supremacy. Upon
conviction, More declared he had all the councils of Christendom and
not just the council of one realm to support him in the decision of his
conscience. Beheaded on Tower Hill, London, July 6, 1535,
he steadfastly
refused to approve Henry VIII’s divorce and remarriage and
establishment of the Church of England.
Four hundred years later, in 1935, Thomas More was canonized a saint of
God. Few saints are more relevant to the 20th century. The supreme
diplomat and counselor, he did not compromise his own moral values in
order to please the king, knowing that true allegiance to authority is
not blind acceptance of everything that authority wants. King Henry
himself realized this and tried desperately to win his chancellor to
his side because he knew More was a man whose approval counted, a man
whose personal integrity no one questioned. But when Thomas resigned as
chancellor, unable to approve the two matters that meant most to Henry,
the king had to get rid of Thomas More. (Saints) Both Fisher and Moreresisted
King Henry VIII on
‘the great matter’ of the dissolution of his marriage and on the issue
of the Pope alone being head of the Church. On the king’s orders they
were executed in the year 1535, Fisher on 22 June and More on July 6.
While Fisher had been held in prison he was created a cardinal of the
Church by Pope Paul III
Jesus said to his
disciples: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where
moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves
break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your
heart be. “The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your
whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your
whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness,
how great will the darkness be.”(Matthew 6:19-23)
I once saw a series
on television, a series produced in England, of an English couple who
spent a few years searching for a home and a small business in Spain.
They were looking for somewhere other than England to live, and
for a business which
they could work at and which would provide them with an enjoyable
interest and a livelihood. The cameraman followed their various
vicissitudes and so very much of what they did seemed somewhat futile.
They did not seem to be getting anywhere for a long time. The thought
that came to me? I could not help thinking that it was a pity that this
couple was spending so much time of their life seeking what looked like
a mirage. I
sensed that their lives
were being filled up seeking what was of little value. Be that as it
may — and of course I was in no position to judge about that particular
couple — our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel speak especially to our
secular culture of this day. Our temptation is to seek the things of
this world and to have little thought for the next. What do I mean by
“the next”? I do not mean that we ought be putting little time into our
duties and interests in this life. I mean that we ought be doing all
that we are required to do but with the aim of pleasing our Father in
heaven. “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Do not store up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in
and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure
is, there also will your heart be’.”
(Matthew 6:19-23) As our Lord points out
so concretely, if all we are seeking in this life are the things of
this life, then what we gain can so easily be destroyed, as it were, by
moth and decay, or taken and destroyed by thieves. The wonderful gift
of time will have been spent on things which will not last. The couple
I mentioned spent a lot of time on things which did not even last in
this life — let alone lasting into the next.
In fact, the vast
majority of persons in the ongoing stream of history live lives filled
with seeming trivialities. Indeed, there is no way that things can be
different for the ordinary man and woman. The question is, how can a
life filled up with seeming trivialities become a life of great
value? The difference will come by serving God our heavenly
Father precisely in those seeming trivialities. The ordinary man and
woman is called to seek and serve God in his family life, or in his
little business, or in his work whatever it may be, or in the raising
of his or her children, or whatever it is. Those humdrum trivialities
make up the daily duties and responsibilities of their life. In their
little ways, they contribute to the development and maintenance of the
world and to the building up of the great family of God forever in
heaven. But they must do them for God. Thus do they collaborate with
God the Creator in his work of sustaining the world he has made and of
preparing for our heavenly homeland. As one saint once wrote, their
lives might appear like that of the donkey that all day every day goes
round and round just pulling. But what is the donkey actually pulling?
He is drawing water for the entire village. Its work is trivial: it is
just pulling the same weight all day every day, but on that work
depends the entire village. So too with the work of the ordinary man
and woman. The key will be to seek to love and serve God in the little
duties of everyday life, and to ensure that life is filled up precisely
with the duties or ambitions that will please him. In this way the
ordinary man will not be seeking a delusory mirage, but will be seeking
the greatest thing possible, to give pleasure to our loving Father in
heaven. Let us constantly remember what was said by the Father on the
mount when Christ was transfigured. “This is my beloved Son in whom I
am well pleased.” Christ always pleased his heavenly Father. The
purpose of our life is so to live that God our Father will be honoured,
glorified, and pleased.
Where our treasure
is, there will our heart be. Our treasure ought lie in the heart of God
our Father in heaven. We can seek and serve him in the ordinary joys,
ambitions and duties of everyday life by doing our work well and for
him. Let us then fill up our lives with love for God and Christ and in
this way transform our seemingly trivial lives into lives of true
grandeur.
(E.J.Tyler)
Why is a false oath forbidden?
It is forbidden because one calls upon God who is truth itself to be
the witness to a lie. (CCC 2150-2151, 2163-2164)
“Do not swear, whether by the Creator or by any
creature, except truthfully, of necessity and with reverence.” (Saint
Ignatius of Loyola)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.448)
(June 23) Saint
John Fisher Bishop of Rochester Born at Beverly, 1469 — martyred
June 22, 1536, Tower of London Canonized (with Saint Thomas More) 1935.
John Fisher studied theology in Cambridge, England and became Bishop of
Rochester. His friend Saint Thomas More wrote of him, "I reckon in this
realm no one man, in wisdom, learning, and long approved virtue
together, meet to be matched and compared with him." Saint John Fisher
and his friend Saint Thomas More gave up their lives in testimony to
the unity of the Church and to the indissolubility of marriage.
Fisher’s Reply to Bishops
Stokesley, Gardiner and Tunstal, sent to the Tower by Thomas
Cromwell to persuade Fisher to submit to the King: Methinks it had
been rather our parts to stick together in repressing these violent and
unlawful intrusions and injuries daily offered to our common mother,
the holy Church of Christ, than by any manner of persuasions to help or
set forward the same. And we ought rather to seek by all means the
temporal destruction of the so ravenous wolves, that daily go about
worrying and devouring everlastingly, the flock that Christ committed
to our charge, and the flock that Himself died for, than to suffer them
thus to range abroad. But (alas) seeing we do it not, you see in what
peril the Christian state now standeth: We are besieged on all sides,
and can hardly escape the danger of our enemy. And seeing that judgment
is begone at the house of God, what hope is there left (if we fall)
that the rest shall stand! The fort is betrayed even of them that
should have defended it. And therefore seeing the matter is thus begun,
and so faintly resisted on our parts, I fear that we be not the men
that shall see the end of the misery. Wherefore, seeing I am an old man
and look not long to live, I mind not by the help of God to trouble my
conscience in pleasing the king this way whatsoever become of me, but
rather here to spend out the remnant of my old days in praying to God
for him.
On the scaffold Fisher said to
the people assembled:
Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's
Holy Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto my stomach hath served
me very well thereunto, so that yet I have not feared death. Wherefore
I
do desire you all to help and assist me with your prayers, that at the
very point and instant of death's stroke, I may in that very moment
stand steadfast without fainting in any one point of the Catholic faith
free from any fear; and I beseech Almighty God of His infinite goodness
to save the king and this Realm, and that it may please Him to hold His
holy hand over it, and send the king good Counsel.
He then knelt, said
the Te Deum, In te domine speravi, and submitted to the axe. Of all the
English bishops, only Bishop John Fisher of Rochester publicly opposed
Henry VIII's mandatory Oath of Allegience, which unlawfully declared
King Henry the head of the Church of England. The bishop's stand
ultimately cost him his life. May his example inspire all Catholics
today, especially the bishops on whose courageous leadership the Church
depends.
(Saints)
Prayer: Father, You confirm the
true faith with the crown of martyrdom. May the prayers of Saints John
Fisher and Thomas More give us the courage to proclaim our faith by the
witness of our lives. + Amen.
Jesus said to his
disciples: “No one 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 God and mammon. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your
life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will
wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look
at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing
into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more
important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to
your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way
the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that
not even Solomon in all his splendour was clothed like one of them. If
God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown
into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of
little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What
are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans
seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first
the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care
of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”(Matthew 6:24-34) As we look
out on
the world we see an immensely vast hive of activity and industry. All
of life is working to survive and flourish. The plants and the trees
are striving to live and to grow. The insects are seeking their food
and reproducing as are the various species of living things of land and
sea and sky. So too does man. Like the animals and the birds and the
fish and the insects he too is active in his attempt to live and
flourish and multiply. But unlike the animals he has his dreams and his
hopes, and unlike the animals he
can know from whence he
comes and to where he is going. He can know his Creator and he has
received a great revelation from him telling him of the divine plan. In
our Gospel today (Matthew 6:24-34) our Lord makes two
observations about man which highlight these distinctive features about
him. Firstly, man can “worry.” Animals do not plan for the future nor
do they “worry” about it. They do not have the mind to do this for they
operate from instinct alone. As our Lord says, “Look at the birds in
the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet
your heavenly Father feeds them.” The animal instinctively takes what
comes and lives on that, whereas man plans for his future and sets his
goals, and “worries” if these goals are threatened. Now, of
course he must have his goals and is called to build up his future. In
the very first pages of the Bible we read of God giving to man whom he
has created the task of filling the earth and mastering it. This
requires planning and the setting of goals and with that planning and
those goals comes his “worry” about them. But what does our Lord say
about this? He tells us that we are to observe the birds in the sky and
the wild flowers growing in the fields. They are looked after by the
Lord and Creator of all. They do not “worry”, and, he says
significantly, nor should we. We are looked after by our heavenly
Father just as much as they are.
The second
point our Lord makes about man is that he is prone to forget the God
who is constantly sustaining him and all he is striving to gain. While
we are unlike the birds and the lilies in the field in that we are
prone to “worry”, we are on the other hand prone to be like them in
their lack of awareness of the Giver of all the blessings we enjoy. We
worry about what we are to eat, what we are to drink and what we are to
wear, and yet we forget the God from whom all these things ultimately
come and whose will is really the one thing necessary for us to do in
life. While God — if he so chooses — can give us all things he cannot
make us obey him. This is because he has chosen to give us the dignity
of possessing free will, which is to say he has chosen to make us in
his image and likeness. While we cannot for all our worrying ward off
the death that sometime must come, we can do or refuse to do God’s
will. That is to say, the one thing that absolutely depends on our own
free decision is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and
it is precisely this which man deliberately refuses to do or else
forgets to do. If we really must “worry” we ought worry about the doing
of God’s will in everything. We are reminded of that delightful
domestic scene in the Gospel in which our Lord is portrayed in the home
of Mary, and Martha and Mary is at the feet of Jesus listening to him
speaking. Undoubtedly he is speaking of “the Kingdom of God and his
righteousness.” Martha, frustrated with the inactivity of her sister
who is doing nothing but giving her whole attention to the words of our
Lord, comes to Jesus and demands that he tell her to get up and give
her a hand with the serving. Our Lord — undoubtedly with a warm smile — replies to Martha (who is a saint of the Church’s liturgical year) that
she should not “worry and fret over many things” because “few are
needed, indeed only one.”
The one thing man
must do is to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.
Then, our Lord adds in our Gospel today, all these other things we need
will be granted to us — of course, in the measure that God our Father
judges is necessary and beneficial to us. Our lives are filled up with
countless little duties and responsibilities, duties towards ourselves
and duties towards others. In all that we do we must not forget the God
from whom all comes. The first thing we must seek in all that we
are called to do in everyday life is the Kingdom of God and his
righteousness. If this is our constant and first priority in
everything, all will be well. We are surely reminded of St Thomas More
on his way to the scaffold saying, though I lose my head I’ll come to
no harm.
“All these things will be given you
besides.” (Matthew 6:24-34) Saint Ignatius of Loyola
(1491-1556), Founder of the Jesuits (Spiritual Exercises,
233-234)
Contemplation to obtain love:
It is good to note first of all that …
love consists in mutual communication. That is to say, the lover gives
and communicates what he has to the beloved…; in the same way, the
beloved to the lover in return …
As a preamble, ask what I want. Here,
that will be to ask for interior knowledge of all the good I have
received, so that in fully recognizing it, I might love and serve his
divine Majesty in everything.
The first point is to remember the
kindnesses received: creation, redemption, and particular gifts. Weigh
with great love how much God our Lord has done for me, how much he has
given me of what he has. Following that, how much the Lord wants to
give himself to me as much as he is able, according to his divine plan.
Then reflect in my heart and consider what it is right and just that I
in turn offer and give to his divine Majesty, all my possessions and
myself with them, like someone who, with great love, makes an offering:
“Take, Lord, and receive my liberty, my memory, my intelligence and my
entire will, all that I have, all that I possess. You gave it to me; to
you, Lord, I give it back. Everything is yours; dispose of it according
to your will. Give me your love and your grace; that is enough for me.”
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
'In te, Domine, speravi: in thee, Lord, have
I hoped.' And, with my human resources, I threw my prayer and my cross
into the balance. And my hope was not vain, nor ever will be: 'Non confundar in aeternum!
I shall never be disappointed!'
(The Way,
no.95)
What is perjury?
Perjury is to make a promise under oath with the intention of not
keeping it or to violate a promise made under oath. It is a grave sin
against God who is always faithful to his promises. (CCC 2152-2155)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.449)
(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.
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.
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)
(June
25) Today let us think of
Blessed Jutta
of Thuringia (d. 1264?)
Today's patroness of Prussia began her life amidst luxury and power but
died the death of a simple servant of the poor. In truth, virtue and
piety were always of prime importance to Jutta and her husband, both of
noble rank. The two were set to make a pilgrimage together to the holy
places in Jerusalem, but her husband died on the way. The newly widowed
Jutta, after taking care to provide for her children, resolved to live
in a manner utterly pleasing to God. She disposed of the costly
clothes, jewels and furniture befitting one of her rank, and became a
Secular Franciscan, taking on the simple garment of a religious. From
that point her life was utterly devoted to others: caring for the sick,
particularly lepers; tending to the poor, whom she visited in their
hovels; helping the crippled and blind with whom she shared her own
home. Many of the townspeople of Thuringia laughed at how the
once-distinguished lady now spent all her time. But Jutta saw the face
of God in the poor and felt honoured to render whatever services she
could. About the year 1260, not long before her death, Jutta lived near
the non-Christians in eastern Germany. There she built a small
hermitage and prayed unceasingly for their conversion. She has been
venerated for centuries as the special patron of Prussia.
(Saints) Saint
Prosper of Reggio This fifth century bishop of Reggio in Italy,
is not commemorated in the city's large cathedral, but in a small
church tucked behind it. He served Reggio for more than 20 years and
was much loved for his kindness and modesty. He cared so little about
his own glory that he specially asked to be buried in the small church
outside the city walls rather than the cathedral. When a rich young man
asked Jesus: "What have I to do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus told
him: "Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and
you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me." Prosper
took this command so seriously he gave away all his possessions. He
died on this day in 466. (Saints)
click on arrow for video
Scripture today:
Genesis
12:1-9; Psalm 33:12-13, 18-19, 20 and 22;
Matthew 7:1-5
Jesus said to his
disciples: “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge,
so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be
measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s
eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you
say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while
the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam
from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter
from your brother’s eye.”(Matthew 7:1-5)
I often think that
our Lord in his addresses would have had the crowds hanging on his
words. He was a superb story-teller, and if there is one thing which
grips the attention of people of all ages from children to the best
educated it is the story. It fills the imagination and provides food
for reflection which goes
on well into the future.
We refer to the Greeks as representing abstract thought — and they did
indeed. But consider their religious mythology and its
abundant imagery. When
it came to religion the Greeks too were a people of the imagination, as
were the Romans. Our Lord was a master of the use of the imagination in
the communication of divine revelation. Another feature of our Lord’s
teaching to the crowds, I suspect, was his humour. Consider our
well-known passage of today (Matthew 7:1-5) in which he tells his
disciples that they are not to judge — and by “judge” he means
“condemn”. We are not to condemn. He tells his disciples that they
“notice the splinter” in their brother’s eye, but fail to notice the
beam of wood in their own! Imagine a log of wood in one’s eye and not
noticing that it is there, all the while complaining of the splinter in
the eye of the other! The image would have evoked peals of laughter in
our Lord’s audience and he would probably have laughed with them as
well. It may have struck them as so amusing that it could have been
remembered long afterwards and repeated to others with laughter as well — all the while carrying with it its crucially important message. I
wonder if there were many such instances of humour in our Lord’s
conversation and discourse. I certainly think that his presence among
his disciples and his constant company with his apostles and closest
associates would have been a happy presence. One gets the impression of
great familiarity between our Lord and those who followed him closely,
a familiarity that would have carried with it plenty of light humour.
How like so many of the greatest saints!
But let us consider
our Lord’s teaching in today’s Gospel passage. How much condemnation
goes on in the hearts of people! Within families, among spouses, in the
workplace, in society, among those who live or associate with one
another, judgment and condemnation fills so much of the human heart.
Accompanying this condemnation is a strange lack of awareness of one’s
own deficiencies and faults. The faults and limitations of the other
are exaggerated, and one’s own limitations go unobserved unless they
are pressed upon us. What is the answer to this problem of anger and
condemnation in the human heart which causes so much strife and
suffering? To begin with, we must take God our Father for our model,
and Jesus Christ as his revelation. God our Father is, as the
Scriptures resoundingly teach us, rich in mercy and his mercy is from
generation to generation. He is ever patient and kind, allowing us time
to repent of our sins and when we do repent he rewards us out of all
proportion to our past offences. He is like the Father of the prodigal
son who ran to meet his returning son and who threw a party on his
arrival back home. He is like the master of the vineyard who goes out
at the eleventh hour and, inviting those he finds to work in his
vineyard, gives them a high wage for the little they have done. That is
to say, God is merciful and compassionate. We should be the same.
Moreover — and this is the other side of this same coin — we should
remember how much we are sinners. We remember the steward who had owed
an astronomical sum to his master the king. The king felt so sorry for
him that he cancelled the debt and yet this same steward immediately
went out and refused mercy to a fellow servant who owed him what was a
substantial sum but nothing to be compared with what he had owed to his
master. We ought constantly remember that we are sinners in profound
debt to God and that God, despite this, loves us and forgives us. God
is our constant model.
So then, the log
has long been and still is in our eye and we are in no position to be
condemning our brother for the splinter in his eye. Let us resolve to
fill our hearts and minds with Christ-like kindness, compassion, mercy
and forgiveness. As our Lord warns us elsewhere in the Gospel,
according to the measure with which we deal it out to others, so will
God deal with us.
(E.J.Tyler)
“Stop judging, that you may not be
judged” (Matthew 7:1-5)
(The Imitation of Christ),
spiritual treatise of the 15th century Book II, chapter 3
You are well versed in colouring your own
actions with excuses which you will not accept from others, though it
would be more just to accuse yourself and excuse your brother.
If you want people to bear with you, you
must bear with them.
Look how far you are from true charity
and humility which does not know how to be angry with anyone or to be
indignant, except against oneself!
It is no great thing to associate with
the good and gentle, for such company is naturally pleasing. Everyone
enjoys a peaceful life and prefers people we find congenial.
But to be able to live at peace with
harsh and unkind people, or with the undisciplined and those who
irritate us, that is a great grace, a praiseworthy and courageous thing…
He who knows best how to bear with
suffering will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of
himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of
heaven.
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
You don't know what to say to our Lord in your prayer. You can't
think of anything, and yet you would like to consult him on many
things. Look: make some notes during the day of whatever you want to
consider in the presence of God. And then take these notes with you to
pray.
(The Way,
no.97)
How
did Jesus act in regard to the Sabbath?
Jesus recognized the holiness of the Sabbath day and with divine
authority he gave this law its authentic interpretation: “The Sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). (CCC 2173)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.451)
(June
26) St.
Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer (1902-1975) was born
in Barbastro, Spain, on January 9, 1902, the second of six children of
Jose and Dolores Escriva. Growing up in a devout family and attending
Catholic schools, he learned the basic truths of the faith and
practices such as frequent confession and communion, the rosary, and
almsgiving. The death of three younger sisters, and his father's
bankruptcy after business
reverses, taught him the meaning of suffering and brought maturity to
his outgoing and cheerful temperament. In 1915, the family moved to
Logrono, where his father had found new employment. Beginning in 1918,
Josemaria sensed that God was asking something of him, although he
didn't know exactly what it was. He decided to become a priest, in
order to be available for whatever God wanted of him. He began studying
for the priesthood, first in Logrono and later in Saragossa. At his
father's suggestion and with the permission of his superiors at the
seminary he also began to study civil law. He was ordained a priest and
began his pastoral ministry in 1925. In 1927, Fr. Josemaria moved to
Madrid to study for a graduate degree in law. He was accompanied by his
mother, sister, and brother, as his father had died in 1924 and he was
now head of the family. They were not well-off, and he had to tutor law
students to support them. At the same time he carried out a demanding
pastoral work, especially among the poor and sick in Madrid, and with
young children. He also undertook an apostolate with manual workers,
professional people and university students who, by coming into contact
with the poor and sick to whom Fr. Josemaria was ministering, learned
the practical meaning of charity and their Christian responsibility to
help out in the betterment of society. On October 2, 1928, while making
a retreat in Madrid, God showed him his specific mission: he was to
found Opus Dei, an institution within the Catholic Church dedicated to
helping people in all walks of life to follow Christ, to seek holiness
in their daily life and grow in love for God and their fellow men and
women. From that moment on, he dedicated all his strength to fulfilling
this mission, certain that God had raised up Opus Dei to serve the
Church. In 1930, responding to a new illumination from God, he started
Opus Dei's apostolic work with women, making clear that they had the
same responsibility as men to serve society and the Church. The first
edition of The Way, his most widely read work, was published in 1934
under the title Spiritual Considerations. His other spiritual writings
include Holy Rosary; The Way of the Cross; two collections of homilies,
Christ Is Passing By and Friends of God; and Furrow and The Forge,
which like The Way are made up of short points for prayer and
reflection. The development of Opus Dei began among the young people
with whom Fr. Josemaria had already been in contact before 1928. Its
growth, however, was seriously impeded by the religious persecution
inflicted on the Catholic Church during the Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939). The founder himself suffered severe hardships under this
persecution but, unlike many other priests, he came out of the war
alive. After the war, he travelled throughout the country giving
retreats to hundreds of priests at the request of their bishops.
Meanwhile Opus Dei spread from Madrid to several other Spanish cities,
and as soon as World War II ended in 1945, began starting in other
countries. This growth was not without pain; though the Work always had
the approval of the local bishops, its then-unfamiliar message of
sanctity in the world met with some misunderstandings and
suspicions-which the founder bore with great patience and charity.
While celebrating Mass in 1943, Fr. Josemaria received a new
foundational grace to establish the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross,
which made it possible for some of Opus Dei's lay faithful to be
ordained as priests. Aware that God meant Opus Dei to be part of the
mission of the universal Church, the founder moved to Rome in 1946 so
as to be close to the Holy See. By 1950 the Work had received
pontifical approvals. Beginning in 1948, full membership in Opus Dei
was open to married people. In 1950 the Holy See approved the idea of
accepting non-Catholics and even non-Christians as cooperators-persons
who assist Opus Dei in its projects and programs without being members.
The next decade saw the launching of a wide range of undertakings.
During Vatican Council II (1962-1965), Monsignor Escriva worked closely
with many of the council fathers. Deeply grateful for the Council's
teachings, he did everything possible to implement them in the
formative activities offered by Opus Dei throughout the world. Between
1970 and 1975 the founder undertook catechetical trips throughout
Europe and Latin America, speaking with many people, at times in large
gatherings, about love of God, the sacraments, Christian dedication,
and the need to sanctify work and family life. By the time of the
founder's death, Opus Dei had spread to thirty nations on six
continents. By 2002 it had more than 84,000 members in sixty countries.
Monsignor Escriva's death in Rome came suddenly on June 26, 1975, when
he was 73. Large numbers of bishops and ordinary faithful petitioned
the Vatican to begin the process for his beatification and
canonization. On May 17, 1992, Pope John Paul II declared him Blessed
before a huge crowd in St. Peter's Square. He was canonized on October
6, 2002.
Jesus said to his
disciples: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls
before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you
to pieces. “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This
is the Law and the Prophets. “Enter through the narrow gate; for the
gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those
who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the
road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:6,
12-14)
There is no doubt
that a Christian, having discovered in a truly personal way the living
Jesus and having decided to follow him generously, can turn out badly.
By that I mean that he can gradually fall away from his faith. The
archetypal example of this is Judas himself, one of the very Twelve. He
was chosen by Christ to occupy a pivotal role in the redemption of the
world inasmuch as he was intended to be one of the Church’s
twelve foundation stones. But little by little he fell away from the
Lord. That can happen to any member of Christ’s faithful and the start
to this is deliberately chosen infidelities and unrepented venial sin. In fact there are
many who fall away from the practice of the Faith and quietly give it
up altogether. God and Christ cease to be important to them and even
into old age with death on the horizon they remain in their complete
indifference. That having been granted, I think the greater danger and
the more common failure is that of long-standing mediocrity. I refer to
the danger of giving up a generous struggle. They do not abandon the
Christian fath but they settle for a certain level of discipleship and,
without admitting it to themselves, they quietly refuse to go beyond
it. There is nothing in their lives that could be said to correspond to
our Lord’s call to leave all and to follow him. They follow him, but
from afar — within earshot, but barely. They come to Mass on Sunday — finding excuses not to do so at times
— and fulfil other basic
requirements, but they do not move beyond what we might call their
comfort zone. They do not face up to those areas in their lives in
which they are resisting the call of grace. They rarely give to the
poor. They do not respond to calls to engage in the apostolate in any
identifiable sense. They do not go much beyond the minimum duties the
Church lays out for all of Christ’s faithful. Their prayer life is
fairly desultory. We might say that they keep on the right side of the
Divine Law, but do not work at their relationship with God. They are
not ambitious for Christ’s love.
Our Lord told us
that he had come that we might have life and have it in abundance. God
wants us to enjoy life to the full in him. He plans for us an abundant
share in his own infinite divine life. It is a life of love and as St
Paul tells us in one of his Letters, eye has not seen nor ear heard all
that God has prepared for those who love him. Now, we must constantly
remember that we have been granted a very brief span of life to gain
the Kingdom of heaven by what our Lord called violence and, he said,
the violent take it by storm. That is to say we must all our lives be
working hard at our relationship with God. We have one chance — it is
this life we have been granted — to be filled with the fulness of God,
and it takes hard work. We cannot just coast along. Observe what our
Lord says of this. “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide
and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter
through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that
leads to life. And those who find it are few.”
(Matthew 7:6, 12-14) Every day is precious
and it constitutes a golden chance to serve our Lord and to grow in his
love, with eternal consequences. What a pity if it is squandered! Once
life is over, our chance to grow further in the divine love will have
gone. If we are saved, Purgatory will be a time not of further growth
and merit but of purging from our sins and imperfections. All those in
heaven all will have been purified of sin and filled with holiness, but
the degree of holiness will vary from person to person and saint to
saint. It will depend on the extent to which during life we have
striven to enter by the narrow gate of obedience to God and his holy
will. Let us compare heaven to a beautiful sea. The sun is God. On that
sea are huge liners which we might liken to the great saints. There are
small craft, and there are smaller objects still, and perhaps lots of
small bottles. Unimaginable happiness reigns, but the capacity of each
will depend on the love for God attained during life.
Let us beware of
mediocrity. Let us struggle to enter the narrow gate of the life that
God offers. It comes with union with Jesus Christ and partnership with
him in his mission, lived out in the generous fulfilment of our daily
duties of state. How can we maintain our generosity and persevere in a
generous quest for holiness? There are many aspects of this, but very
important is the policy of always starting again. So then, now I begin!
Now I begin! Every day, now I begin!
(E.J.Tyler)
«Enter through the narrow gate
» (Matt 7:6, 12-14)St Benedict
(480-547), (The
Rule, Prologue)
The Lord, seeking his labourer in the
multitude to whom he thus cries out, says again, "Who is the one who
will have life, and desires to see good days?" (Ps. 34:13) And if,
hearing him, you answer, "I am the one," God says to you, "If you will
have true and everlasting life, keep your tongue from evil and your
lips that they speak no guile. Turn away from evil and do good; seek
after peace and pursue it" (Ps. 34:14-15)… What can be sweeter to us,
dear brothers, than this voice of the Lord inviting us? In his loving
kindness the Lord shows us the way of life. Having our loins girded,
therefore, with faith and the performance of good works (Eph. 6:14),
let us walk in his paths by the guidance of the Gospel, that we may
deserve to see him who has called us to his Kingdom (1 Th 2:12). For if
we wish to dwell in the tent of that kingdom, we must run to it by good
deeds or we shall never reach it. Let us ask the Lord, with the
prophet, "Lord, who shall dwell in your tent, or who shall rest upon
your holy mountain?" (Ps. 15:1) After this question, brothers, let us
listen to the Lord as he answers and shows us the way…
And so we are going to establish a
school for the service of the Lord. In founding it we hope to introduce
nothing harsh or burdensome. But if a certain strictness results from
the dictates of equity for the amendment of vices or the preservation
of charity, do not be at once dismayed and fly from the way of
salvation, whose entrance cannot but be narrow. For as we advance in
life and in faith, our hearts expand and we run the way of God's
commandments with unspeakable sweetness of love (Ps. 119:32). Thus,
never departing from his schooling but persevering in the monastery
according to his teaching until death, we may by patience share in the
sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 4:13) and deserve to have a share also in
his Kingdom.
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
Next to the prayer of priests and of dedicated virgins, the prayer
most pleasing to God is the prayer of children and that of the sick.
(The Way,
no.98)
For what reason has the
Sabbath been changed to Sunday for Christians?
The reason is because Sunday is the day of the Resurrection of Christ.
As “the first day of the week” (Mark 16:2) it recalls the first
creation; and as the “eighth day”, which follows the sabbath, it
symbolizes the new creation ushered in by the Resurrection of Christ.
Thus, it has become for Christians the first of all days and of all
feasts. It is the day of the Lord in which he with his Passover
fulfilled the spiritual truth of the Jewish Sabbath and proclaimed
man’s eternal rest in God. (CCC 2174-2176, 2190-2191)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.452)
(June 27) Saint
Cyril of Alexandria, bishop and doctor of the Church (370-444).
Cyril entered a monastery, became a priest and then in 412 succeeded
his uncle as Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. Saints are not born with
halos around their heads. Cyril, recognized as a great teacher of the
Church, began his career as archbishop of Alexandria, Egypt, with
impulsive, often violent, actions. He pillaged and closed the churches
of the Novatian heretics, participated in the deposing of St. John
Chrysostom and confiscated Jewish property, expelling the Jews from
Alexandria in retaliation for their attacks on Christians. Cyril’s
importance for theology and Church history lies in his championing the
cause of orthodoxy against the heresy of Nestorius. He fought
strenuously
against the teachings of Nestorius and took the lead at the Council of
Ephesus to defend the oneness of the Person of Jesus Christ and the
divine maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was an acute and
profound
theologian and wrote many works to explain and defend the Catholic
faith.
(Saints) Saint John
Southworth Priest and martyr. St John was born in 1592 in
Lancashire. He went overseas to study and was ordained in Douai in
1618. St John returned to England in 1627 and was soon arrested. He
spent three years in prison — the first of several imprisonments. Most
of his priestly work was carried out in Westminster. He was much loved
for his ministry to the sick and dying, especially during the plague
years. He continued his work until 1654, when he was arrested for the
last time, tried and finally condemned to death. On this day, at the
age of 62, he was hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, close to where
Marble Arch now stands. St John was the last secular priest to suffer
in this way. His body was taken to Douai, embalmed and buried. But when
the seminary was demolished, during the French Revolution, his coffin
was lost. It was accidentally discovered in 1927 and taken to St
Edmund's College in Ware. Three years later St John's body was placed
in a shrine at Westminster Cathedral, in the parish where he spent so
much of his life. St John was canonised with the Forty Martyrs in 1970.
He is a patron saint of priests.
Jesus said to his
disciples: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s
clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will
know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from
thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree
bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten
tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be
cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know
them.”
(Matthew 7:15-20)
One of the notable
and perennial characteristics of human society is its propensity for
dissensions and consequent divisions. Whatever is the prevailing regime
in a society, many will be found in it who dissent from what is done or
allowed by those who rule. Some dissent with such sincerity and purpose
that they are prepared to overthrow the ruler or else launch a
breakaway society. The motives for such actions can be objectively
blameworthy or laudable. Julius Caesar culminated his string of
victories in Gaul with his
move against the
Republic. Presumably he sincerely believed that this was the best thing
to do — which is to say that he probably did what he thought was right,
however mixed his motives were. If this can be said of Caesar it can be
said with just as much validity about the plotters who finally
assassinated him and those who waged the wars that followed. And so the
story of human history goes on. There is dissent and division in
societies and to a
greater or lesser extent those involved sincerely believe themselves to
be in the right. Let us put it in contemporary terms. According to
their lights they are (to a degree) “following their conscience”. Now
then, when our Lord founded his Church to bring to mankind his living
person, his teaching and his redemption, he predicted that the Church
would face trouble. He said to Simon Peter on one occasion that “the
gates of hell will not prevail against it.” So trouble would come from
hell itself. As we read in today’s Gospel, another source of trouble
would be “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but
underneath are ravenous wolves.” They are rotten trees bearing “bad
fruit.” The false prophets will come at times from outside Christ’s
Church, at times from within it. We read in the Acts of the Apostles
and in the New Testament Letters warnings and many instances of “false
prophets” who rend the life and structure of the Church. What, then,
can be said about the “false prophets” Christ warns his disciples
against?
Throughout the
centuries there has been plenty of dissent within the Church. Just as
it is a recurring cycle in civil societies, so is it a recurring cycle
in the life of the Church. It has often led to profound divisions and
rampant heresies, resulting in the rise of new churches and ecclesial
communions. The early Church was marked by numerous instances of this,
and every epoch has had its examples. Now, one of the interesting
things about this is that usually the leaders who rise up in dissent
and take with them many away from the life of the Church have been
“sincere”. They have been “following their conscience.” But what does
our Lord say in today’s Gospel? He warns against “false prophets”
without mentioning the matter of their presumed sincerity (Matthew 7:15-20). Presumably the
“prophet” who is “false” is often or even generally sincere. He
considers himself as following his conscience and because he appears to
be doing this he gains credibility as a “prophet” and feels authorised
to accept such a status. But this does not make of him a true
“prophet”. His falsity as a prophet derives from his false teaching
which leads others away from Christ’s Church. He may be conscientious,
he may be sincere, he may be “following his conscience” — or he may
fail to be any of these things — but that is not the point. The point
is that he is a “false” prophet in that his very teaching shows that he
is not from God. By his “fruit” he is to be known. His teaching does
not square with what God has revealed and entrusted to his authorized
representatives — which in Christ’s case is the Twelve and those in
apostolic succession to them. That is to say, that a person is
following his conscience is not the primary indicator that his teaching
is to be recognized as of God. What places him in the class of
“prophet” is not that he follows his conscience, but that his
conscience has led him to accept and to do what is objectively right
and not to what is objectively wrong.
At the end of his
famous Letter
to the Duke of Norfolk Cardinal Newman
rhetorically raised his glass to conscience first and then to the Pope.
By this he meant that all must place the doing of one’s duty at the
forefront of life. His whole life was a testimony to the duty to assent
to revealed truth as found in the Catholic Church which Christ founded.
One’s duty is to know the objective and revealed truth, to identify
where it is found, to assent to it, and to bear witness to it before
others.
(E.J.Tyler)
When you go to pray, let this be a firm resolution: Don't prolong
your prayer because you find consolation in it or shorten it because
you find it dry.
(The Way,
no.99)
How does one keep Sunday holy?
Christians keep Sunday and other days of obligation holy by
participating in the Eucharist of the Lord and by refraining from those
activities which impede the worship of God and disturb the joy proper
to the day of the Lord or the necessary relaxation of mind and body.
Activities are allowed on the Sabbath which are bound up with family
needs or with important social service, provided that they do not lead
to habits prejudicial to the holiness of Sunday, to family life and to
health. (CCC 2177-2185, 2192-2193)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.453)
(June
28) St
Irenaeus, bishop
and martyr (130-202).
He was a disciple of St Polycarp of
Smyrna. Bishop. Born in Smyrna around 140, as a boy he was a friend of
St Polycarp who had heard St John the Evangelist preach. "The things we
learn in childhood are part of our soul," he wrote. St Irenaeus
cherished Polycarp's teachings, saying they were written "not on paper
but in my heart." St Irenaeus was an important theologian. The Church
is fortunate that Irenaeus was involved in many of its controversies in
the second century. He was a student, well trained, no doubt, with
great patience in investigating, tremendously protective of apostolic
teaching, but prompted more by a desire to win over his opponents than
to prove them in error. He
succeeded the martyred St Pothimus in the See of Lyons. As
bishop of Lyons he was especially concerned with the Gnostics, who took
their name from the Greek word for “knowledge.” Claiming access to
secret knowledge imparted by Jesus to only a few disciples, their
teaching was attracting and confusing many Christians. After thoroughly
investigating the various Gnostic sects and their “secret,” Irenaeus
showed to what logical conclusions their tenets led. These he
contrasted with the teaching of the apostles and the text of Holy
Scripture, giving us, in five books, a system of theology of great
importance to subsequent times. Moreover, his work, widely used and
translated into Latin and Armenian, gradually ended the influence of
the Gnostics. The circumstances and details about his death, like those
of his birth and early life in Asia Minor, are not at all clear. He
died at Lyon in 200 and was buried in the crypt of the church of St
John. In 1562 his shrine was destroyed by Calvinists.
(Saints)
click on arrow for video
Scripture: Genesis 16:1-12,
15-16 or 16:6b-12, 15-16; Psalm 106:1b-5; Matthew 7:21-29
Jesus said to his
disciples: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the
Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in
heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we
not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them
solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’ “Everyone
who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise
man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and
the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had
been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of
mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house
on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and
buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.” When
Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. (Matthew 7:21-29)
One of the enduring
characteristics of the human being is his lively hope. He hopes in
things to come. On the one hand, consider the person who has little
hope or perhaps none. What kind of a life will he be leading? His life
will have been drained of virtually all its vitality. On the other
hand, consider the person who is full of hope. Normally he will be
constantly working, he will be cheerful, and his life will be marked by
meaning. Hope is central to a human life, but the next question is, in
what are people hoping? Here we see an unending array of
differences among men and societies, and their hopes all too often are
what spark conflagrations and wars. Consider the publication in London
(1848) of Das
Kapital, the
foundational book by Karl Marx for the philosophy of Communism. It set
forth a utopia, a future kingdom we might say, in which contentment
would reign. Class differences would be eliminated, there would be a
level playing field permanently in place for all, and the delusory pie
on the sky — which is religion — would disappear. We know the
catastrophic suffering which this hope led to. We could think of other
great hopes that have captured the imagination of individuals, groups
and whole peoples during the course of human history, hopes that
pointed to a golden future. Well now, God has revealed that he has
indeed a golden future in store for us and he has sent the Holy Spirit
to sustain amid any adversity our hope in what he has promised. I refer
to God’s Kingdom which our Lord announced, taught, established, which
he rules and which he invites all mankind to enter. The Church which he
founded is the seed and proclaimer of this Kingdom, and those who wish
to enter the Kingdom of God which has Christ for its King are called to
enter and serve mankind in this Church which is his body. God has
revealed that it is in this Kingdom that mankind’s true hopes lie. God
made us to hope for this.
It is one thing to
think of man who hopes, and to think then of the Kingdom which has been
revealed by God as being the true object of his hope, but the practical
issue is how to enter this Kingdom. Our Lord tells us that it is not
just a matter of turning our minds to God and calling on him, even
though this is the very thing that modern secular man
characteristically fails to do. It is not just a matter of doing this.
The crunch-point consists in listening to the word of Christ and
putting it into practice. We must strive above all to do God’s
will. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the
Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in
heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we
not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them
solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’ “Everyone
who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise
man who built his house on rock.” (Matthew
7:21-29).
Striving to enter the Kingdom of God involves striving to know what God
wills in life, and striving then to put his will into practice. How
little this is done! Let us take a current issue all over the world,
the legalization of embryonic stem cell research. Despite what it must
do to the unborn human being at the very start of his precarious and
vulnerable existence, because this research and experimentation might
possibly be useful for the health of others, it is being legalized. Who
among those pressing for the legalization of this is asking, what does
God want in this matter? Does God want vulnerable human beings to be
attacked and used for spare parts for the sake of others? As our Lord
said in response to the Sadducees who raised a different matter, God is
the God of the living and not of the dead.
Man is made to
hope, and it is hope that will give to his life its meaning and
vitality. He is called by God to place his hopes in that Kingdom which
Christ makes available to us in the Church which he founded and which
he sustains. We shall enter his Kingdom if we do his will. Therefore
all our life we ought be hoping and working to do his will. Our best
hopes lie in striving to know and to do the will of God and in
influencing others to do his will also. Let us make the knowing and the
doing of the will of God the heart and soul of our everyday life.
Why is the civil recognition of Sunday as a feast day important?
It is important so that all might be given the real possibility of
enjoying sufficient rest and leisure to take care of their religious,
familial, cultural and social lives. It is important also to have an
opportune time for meditation, for reflection, for silence, for study,
and a time to dedicate to good works, particularly for the sick and for
the elderly. (CCC 2186-2188, 2194-2195)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.454)
(June
29) The Church founded by Christ and in particular the
Church of Rome has St Peter and St Paul
as its principal pillars. Peter
was chosen by Christ to be his first Vicar on earth, endowed with
powers of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 16:13-19), and
charged with the role of Shepherd of Christ’s flock (John 21:15-17). In
Peter and his successors, the visible sign of unity and communion in
faith and charity has been given. Divine grace led Peter to profess
Christ’s divinity. St Peter suffered martyrdom under Nero in AD 66 or
67. He was buried at the hill of the Vatican, where excavations have
revealed his tomb on the very site of the Basilica of St Peter.
(Saints) Paul was
chosen to form part of the apostolic college by the risen
Christ himself on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-16). An instrument
selected to bring Christ’s name to the gentiles, he is one of the
greatest of missionaries, the advocate of the pagans. He was beheaded
in the Tre Fontane along the Via Ostiense and buried nearby, where the
basilica bearing his name now is.
(Saints)
When Jesus went
into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his
disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They replied,
“Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one
of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly
Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail
against it. I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Whatever
you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on
earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew
16:13-19)
It has been justly
observed — and as an objection by certain
non-Christians — that while the prophets in their preaching constantly
pointed to God and away from themselves, the case seems to be different
with Jesus of Nazareth. He himself appears to be central to his own
preaching. Yes, he constantly speaks of the great One he calls his own
Father and yet a very great deal of his teaching as reported in the
Gospels involves a presentation of himself. He is shown asking people
to be his disciples and to follow him with an insistence no other
prophet before him manifests. More than this, he asks that people love
him and be his ardent friends. He expects total dedication to his own
person, making it clear that salvation is at stake in this dedication
to him. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Now, if this is an
objection the Christian accepts it and states candidly that the special
distinction of the Christian
religion is the
unavoidable centrality of
the person of Jesus. The Muslim will claim that Mahomet is the Prophet
but of course that he points away from himself to God alone. Buddha
points to Enlightenment and to Nirvana, and so it goes on. But Christ
points to himself and in pointing to himself he points to the Father,
for, he teaches, he who sees me sees the Father. Furthermore, no one
can say Jesus is Lord except by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit.
In Jesus, as St Paul puts it very plainly, is the very fulness of the
godhead bodily. So then, in our Gospel today our Lord “asks his
disciples ‘who do people say that the Son of Man is?’” This question is
a centrepiece of St Matthew’s Gospel. What prophet in the Old Testament
regarded the knowledge of his own person as so important in the
fulfilment of his mission? Christ makes it clear that sooner or later
the one aspiring to entry into the Kingdom of God would have to be his
disciple, and this involved an acceptance of his person as being “the
Christ, the Son of the living God.”
So then, the
Christian religion proclaims that in the person of Jesus
is found all heavenly blessings. But there is a further step
which Christ requires, and which is also unexpected. In insisting on
his own person as indispensable for salvation, he insists also on his
Church. He does not come alone but comes to each generation in his
Church. In our Gospel today, having gained the acknowledgment from his
disciples as uttered by Simon Peter that he is the Messiah and the Son
of the living God, he immediately passed on to his Church. “Jesus said
to him in reply, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and
blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I
say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will
give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven’.” (Matthew
16:13-19)
This Messiah who announces the arrival of the Kingdom of heaven and in
whom this promised Kingdom is found immediately gives to Simon the keys
to it. Observe, our Lord came to establish God’s Kingdom and the keys
to it were given to Simon. On him, on the rock that was Simon, would
Christ build his Church, his chosen people. Consider carefully and
without any blinkered view the words Christ pronounces over the person
of Simon. He is Peter the rock. On him Christ would found his Church,
and to him would the keys to the Kingdom of heaven be granted.
Hell would not be able to prevail against this Church, and whatever
Simon bound or loosed would be ratified in heaven. The Church, then, is
central in Christ’s redemptive plan and work, and Simon and his
authority is central to the Church. The Christian — the one who has
Christ as the object of his life — is inseparably bound to the Church
and to Peter because the keys are to be found there.
There is much talk
now of fundamentalism. I suppose one feature of the
fundamentalist is that he is simplistic to such an extent that the true
reality in its wholeness is missed. The person of Christ is the object
of the life and the mind and the heart of the Christian. He loves
Christ
as one loves God, and knows that God’s Kingdom is found in Jesus. But
it is not just a matter of me and Jesus, for Jesus himself has
entrusted the keys of the Kingdom to Peter and the Church which is
built on Peter. In being called to Christ, then, we are also called to
be of the Church.
(The oldest historical testimony of
the martyrdom of Peter and Paul) St Clement of Rome,
Pope from 90 to about 200 Letter to the
Corinthians, 5-7 (Breviary)
Moving on from examples in the past, let
us come to those who entered the contest in modern times – let us take
the noble examples of our own generation. Through jealousy and envy the
greatest and most righteous pillars of the Church were attacked and
they kept up the struggle until death. Let us consider the holy
apostles: Peter, who because of unrighteous jealousy suffered not one
or two but many trials, and having thus given his testimony went to the
glorious place which was his due. Paul, who through jealousy and strife
showed the way to the prize of endurance: seven times he was in bonds,
he was exiled, he was stoned, he was a herald both in the East and in
the West, he gained the noble fame of his faith, he taught
righteousness to all the world, and when he had reached the limits of
the West he gave his testimony before the rulers, and thus passed from
the world and was taken up into the Holy Place — the greatest example
of endurance. To these men with their holy lives were added a great
multitude of the chosen, who were the victims of jealousy and offered
among us the fairest example in their endurance under many indignities
and tortures…
My beloved, we are not only writing
these things to you to teach you but also to remind ourselves, for we
are in the same arena, and the same struggle is before us. Therefore
let us put aside empty and vain cares, and let us come to the glorious
and venerable rule of our tradition, and let us see what is good and
pleasing and acceptable in the sight of our Maker. Let us fix our gaze
on the Blood of Christ, and let us know that it is precious to his
Father because it was poured out for our salvation and it brought the
grace of repentance to all the world.
(Selected by "The Daily Gospel", New Hope, KY 40052. USA.)
What does the fourth commandment require?
It commands us to honor and respect our parents and those whom God, for
our good, has vested with his authority. (CCC 2196-2200, 2247-2248)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.455)
(June
30) The
First Martyrs
of the Church of Rome. This
day commemorates all those who died in the persecutions of Nero at
about 64 AD, and always falls after the feast of St Peter and St Paul.
Little is known about many of these early Christians. Because of the
lack of information, after 1969 several individual names were left out
of the list of saints. Remembering them as a group in this way makes up
for those whose histories have been lost. There were Christians in Rome
within a dozen or so years after the death of Jesus. In 49-50 AD the
Emperor Claudius expelled all Jews and Jewish Christians, from Rome.
Perhaps many came back after Claudius' death because, in 54 AD, St
Paul's letter was addressed to a Church with members from Jewish and
Gentile backgrounds. In July of 64 AD, more than half of Rome was
destroyed by fire. Rumour blamed the tragedy on Nero, who wanted to
enlarge his palace. He shifted the blame by accusing the Christians. Many
Christians were killed with atrocious torments. They were people
of all professions and levels of society. This celebration reminds us
that all Christians are called to seek sanctity.
(Saints)
click on arrow for video
Scripture today:
Genesis
8:1-15; Luke 1:46-47, 48-49, 50 and 53, 54-55;
Matthew 8:5-17
When Jesus entered
Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying,
“Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, suffering dreadfully.” He
said to him, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion said in reply,
“Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the
word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man subject to
authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he
goes; and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do
this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said
to those following him, “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I
found such faith. I say to you, many will come from the east and the
west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in
the Kingdom of heaven, but the children of the Kingdom will be driven
out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding
of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “You may go; as you have
believed, let it be done for you.” And at that very hour his servant
was healed. Jesus entered the house of Peter, and saw his mother-in-law
lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand, the fever left her, and
she rose and waited on him. When it was evening, they brought him many
who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word
and cured all the sick, to fulfil what had been said by Isaiah the
prophet: He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.(Matthew 8:5-17)
All through the
Gospels our Lord is asking for faith. Specifically, he is constantly
asking for faith in his own person. Let us set this phenomenon in the
context of world history and of the other great leaders and teachers of
the world. I do not think a person could be easily thought of who asked
so consistently for outright faith — backed up by miracles and other
convincing supports, of course. But so it is. Christ places faith in
him at the centre of what he asks for and expects of those who
encounter him, be they members of God’s chosen people, or persons
outside of this people. Faith is of greater import than great
intelligence, education or any other
useful circumstance. We see this same pattern at work in today’s Gospel
in which “a centurion approached him and appealed to him saying, ‘Lord
my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.’ He said
to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ The centurion said in reply, ‘Lord,
I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and
my servant will be healed. For I too am a man subject to authority,
with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and
to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and
he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those
following him, “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found
such faith.” (Matthew 8:5-17)Very clearly it was the
centurion’s great faith in his person, in his love and power that
evoked Christ’s admiration and pleasure. Faith in Christ is immensely
pleasing to our heavenly Father and it unlocks the power of God and
shows it forth as his mercy. “And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘You may
go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.’ And at that very
hour his servant was healed.” The critical importance of faith applies
to all aspects of life, including the Christian life. If we wish to
benefit from the mercy of God and be sustained by his aid, we must turn
to him in faith.
The second thing we
notice in our Gospel passage today is that this all-important faith is
open to anyone. It is not the preserve of the chosen people of God. It
is a centurion who approaches Christ with such great faith that,
humanly, our Lord was simply amazed. He turned to those around him and
declared that he had not met with such faith in all Israel. Of course
our Lord was making a point here — after all, the centurion’s great
faith in our Lord could not be compared with, say, that of our Lord’s
own mother. The point is that God can grant to anyone the gift of a
true insight into the power, the love and the person of Jesus of
Nazareth. It means too that we who know Christ can confidently
introduce him to those who do not have faith in him nor much knowledge
of him. We can speak of him to others and bear witness to him in the
world — and that is what all of Christ’s disciples and especially the
lay faithful are called to do. The lay faithful whose natural ambient
is the world have by vocation the task to bear witness to Jesus by word
and work to those who do not know him. As they do this, let them think
of the centurion who had heard of Christ and who approached him in his
need. We ought encourage all to approach Christ in their need. Let us
encourage the Moslem, the Hindu, the agnostic, the atheist, to consider
Christ and to approach him when in need even if they do not have the fulness of Christian belief. After all, the centurion hardly had the
fulness of belief in Christ that is expected of the disciple. He may
never have had this, for we are not told his name (as we are of
Simon of Cyrene, and BarTimaeus the blind beggar) and he seems to
disappear from the Gospel scene after the miracle wrought for
him. But he had heard of Christ, he approached him with faith, he
gained the answer to his request that he was seeking, and he had the
benefit of personal contact with Christ.
Let us place the
gift of faith in Christ very high in our estimation and carefully guard
and exercise it in our own life. Let us bear in mind the centurion, a
man presumably outside the chosen people of God but one who had great
faith in Christ as far as it went. He reminds us that all are called to
faith in Christ the redeemer, which in turn means that we have a
responsibility to bring Christ to all. Let us endeavour to do this in
our everyday lives.
What is the nature of
the family in the plan of God?
A man and
a woman united in marriage form a family together with their children.
God instituted the family and endowed it with its fundamental
constitution. Marriage and the family are ordered to the good of the
spouses and to the procreation and education of children. Members of
the same family establish among themselves personal relationships and
primary responsibilities. In Christ the family becomes the domestic
church because it is a community of faith, of hope, and of charity.
(CCC 2205, 2249)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.456)
Pope Benedict
XVI's
general prayer intention
for the month of June
2007: "That the
Lord may protect sailors and all those involved in maritime activities."
Jesus entered
Jerusalem and went into the temple area. He looked around
at everything and, since it was already late, went out to Bethany with
the Twelve. The next day as they were leaving Bethany he was hungry.
Seeing from a distance a fig tree in leaf, he went over to see if he
could find anything on it. When he reached it he found nothing but
leaves; it was not the time for figs. And he said to it in reply, “May
no one ever eat of your fruit again!”
And his disciples heard it. They came to Jerusalem, and on entering the
temple area he began to
drive out those selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of
the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. He
did not permit anyone to carry anything through the temple area. Then
he taught them saying, “Is it not written: My house shall be called a
house of prayer for all peoples? But you have made it a den of
thieves.” The chief priests and the
scribes came to hear of it and were seeking a way to put him to death,
yet they feared him because the whole crowd was astonished at his
teaching. When evening came, they went out of the city. Early in the
morning, as they were walking along, they saw the fig tree withered to
its roots. Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree
that you cursed has withered.” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have faith
in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted
up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but
believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.
Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you
will receive it and it shall be yours. When you stand to pray, forgive
anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father
may in turn forgive you your transgressions.”
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and Emperor Henry V. When he was about 35, he
had a riding accident, narrowly escaping death, and underwent a sudden
conversion which made him give up his life at court to become a priest.
He became a canon of the cathedral of Xanten, and soon tried to reform
the canons of Xanten, asking them to give up their luxurious lifestyle
and devote more time to prayer and pastoral duties. His appeal was
treated with contempt, so he left the court to become an itinerant
preacher going throughout France and Germany and other places preaching
the word of God. With the help of companions who joined him he founded
a community of reformed canons under the rule of St Augustine at
Premontre. This was the first house of the Premonstratensians (now
normally called the Norbertines). The new order was very popular in
Western Europe because it combined the priesthood with an austere daily
life. In 1126 he was chosen as archbishop of Magdeburg and introduced
many reforms into his diocese, fighting corrupt practices among the
clergy and laity. In 1130 he put all his influence behind Pope Innocent
t II in his struggle with the antipope Pierleone. Norbert was appointed
Chancellor for Italy by Emperor Lothair II. There was more than one
attempt on his life. In the 20 years that he lived after his conversion
he made a great mark on his era. Norbert died in Magdeburg in 1134 and
was canonised in 1582. His relics were moved to the abbey church of his
order at Strahove near Prague. His emblem is a monstrance. 
Jesus went to a town called Nain, and
his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town
gate, a dead person was being carried out— the only son of his mother, and she
was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. When the Lord saw
her, his heart went out to her and he said, Do not weep. Then he went up and
touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, Young man, I say
to you, get up! The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back
to his mother. They were all filled with awe and praised God. A great prophet
has appeared among us, they said. God has come to help his people.
(Luke 7: 11-17)
water from the
wells of salvation" (Is 12: 3).
Methinks it had
been rather our parts to stick together in repressing these violent and
unlawful intrusions and injuries daily offered to our common mother,
the holy Church of Christ, than by any manner of persuasions to help or
set forward the same. And we ought rather to seek by all means the
temporal destruction of the so ravenous wolves, that daily go about
worrying and devouring everlastingly, the flock that Christ committed
to our charge, and the flock that Himself died for, than to suffer them
thus to range abroad. But (alas) seeing we do it not, you see in what
peril the Christian state now standeth: We are besieged on all sides,
and can hardly escape the danger of our enemy. And seeing that judgment
is begone at the house of God, what hope is there left (if we fall)
that the rest shall stand! The fort is betrayed even of them that
should have defended it. And therefore seeing the matter is thus begun,
and so faintly resisted on our parts, I fear that we be not the men
that shall see the end of the misery. Wherefore, seeing I am an old man
and look not long to live, I mind not by the help of God to trouble my
conscience in pleasing the king this way whatsoever become of me, but
rather here to spend out the remnant of my old days in praying to God
for him.
after business
reverses, taught him the meaning of suffering and brought maturity to
his outgoing and cheerful temperament. In 1915, the family moved to
Logrono, where his father had found new employment. Beginning in 1918,
Josemaria sensed that God was asking something of him, although he
didn't know exactly what it was. He decided to become a priest, in
order to be available for whatever God wanted of him. He began studying
for the priesthood, first in Logrono and later in Saragossa. At his
father's suggestion and with the permission of his superiors at the
seminary he also began to study civil law. He was ordained a priest and
began his pastoral ministry in 1925. In 1927, Fr. Josemaria moved to
Madrid to study for a graduate degree in law. He was accompanied by his
mother, sister, and brother, as his father had died in 1924 and he was
now head of the family. They were not well-off, and he had to tutor law
students to support them. At the same time he carried out a demanding
pastoral work, especially among the poor and sick in Madrid, and with
young children. He also undertook an apostolate with manual workers,
professional people and university students who, by coming into contact
with the poor and sick to whom Fr. Josemaria was ministering, learned
the practical meaning of charity and their Christian responsibility to
help out in the betterment of society. On October 2, 1928, while making
a retreat in Madrid, God showed him his specific mission: he was to
found Opus Dei, an institution within the Catholic Church dedicated to
helping people in all walks of life to follow Christ, to seek holiness
in their daily life and grow in love for God and their fellow men and
women. From that moment on, he dedicated all his strength to fulfilling
this mission, certain that God had raised up Opus Dei to serve the
Church. In 1930, responding to a new illumination from God, he started
Opus Dei's apostolic work with women, making clear that they had the
same responsibility as men to serve society and the Church. The first
edition of The Way, his most widely read work, was published in 1934
under the title Spiritual Considerations. His other spiritual writings
include Holy Rosary; The Way of the Cross; two collections of homilies,
Christ Is Passing By and Friends of God; and Furrow and The Forge,
which like The Way are made up of short points for prayer and
reflection. The development of Opus Dei began among the young people
with whom Fr. Josemaria had already been in contact before 1928. Its
growth, however, was seriously impeded by the religious persecution
inflicted on the Catholic Church during the Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939). The founder himself suffered severe hardships under this
persecution but, unlike many other priests, he came out of the war
alive. After the war, he travelled throughout the country giving
retreats to hundreds of priests at the request of their bishops.
Meanwhile Opus Dei spread from Madrid to several other Spanish cities,
and as soon as World War II ended in 1945, began starting in other
countries. This growth was not without pain; though the Work always had
the approval of the local bishops, its then-unfamiliar message of
sanctity in the world met with some misunderstandings and
suspicions-which the founder bore with great patience and charity.
While celebrating Mass in 1943, Fr. Josemaria received a new
foundational grace to establish the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross,
which made it possible for some of Opus Dei's lay faithful to be
ordained as priests. Aware that God meant Opus Dei to be part of the
mission of the universal Church, the founder moved to Rome in 1946 so
as to be close to the Holy See. By 1950 the Work had received
pontifical approvals. Beginning in 1948, full membership in Opus Dei
was open to married people. In 1950 the Holy See approved the idea of
accepting non-Catholics and even non-Christians as cooperators-persons
who assist Opus Dei in its projects and programs without being members.
The next decade saw the launching of a wide range of undertakings.
During Vatican Council II (1962-1965), Monsignor Escriva worked closely
with many of the council fathers. Deeply grateful for the Council's
teachings, he did everything possible to implement them in the
formative activities offered by Opus Dei throughout the world. Between
1970 and 1975 the founder undertook catechetical trips throughout
Europe and Latin America, speaking with many people, at times in large
gatherings, about love of God, the sacraments, Christian dedication,
and the need to sanctify work and family life. By the time of the
founder's death, Opus Dei had spread to thirty nations on six
continents. By 2002 it had more than 84,000 members in sixty countries.
Monsignor Escriva's death in Rome came suddenly on June 26, 1975, when
he was 73. Large numbers of bishops and ordinary faithful petitioned
the Vatican to begin the process for his beatification and
canonization. On May 17, 1992, Pope John Paul II declared him Blessed
before a huge crowd in St. Peter's Square. He was canonized on October
6, 2002.