September 2007 (From
the 22nd week to 25th week)
Pope Benedict
XVI's
general prayer intention
for the month of September
2007: "That the ecumenical
assembly of Sibiu in Romania may
contribute to the growth of unity among all Christians, for whom the
Lord prayed at the Last Supper."
(September
1) Saint Giles
of Castaneda (Pictured)
An Abbot, said to have been born of
illustrious Athenian parentage about the middle of the seventh century.
Early in life he devoted himself exclusively to spiritual things, but,
finding his noble birth and high repute for sanctity in his native land
an obstacle to his perfection, he passed over to Gaul, where he
established himself first in a wilderness near the mouth of the Rhone
and later by the River Gard. But here again the fame of his sanctity
drew multitudes to him, so he withdrew to a dense forest near Nimes,
where in the greatest solitude he spent many years, his sole companion
being a hind. This last retreat was finally discovered by the king's
hunters, who had pursued the hind to its place of refuge. The king [who
according to the legend was Wamba (or Flavius?), King of the Visigoths,
but who must have been a Frank, since the Franks had expelled the
Visigoths from the neighbourhood of Nimes almost a century and a half
earlier] conceived a high esteem for solitary, and would have heaped
every honour upon him; but the humility of the saint was proof against
all temptations. He consented, however, to receive thenceforth some
disciples, and built a monastery in his valley, which he placed under
the rule of St. Benedict. Here he died in the early part of the eighth
century, with the highest repute for sanctity and miracles.
(Saints)
His cult spread rapidly far
and wide throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, as is witnessed by the
numberless churches and monasteries dedicated to him in France,
Germany, Poland, Hungary, and the British Isles; by the numerous MSS.
in prose and verse commemorating his virtues and miracles; and
especially by the vast concourse of pilgrims who from all Europe
flocked to his shrine. In 1562 the relics of the saint were secretly
transferred to Toulouse to save them from the hideous excesses of the
Huguenots who were then ravaging France, and the pilgrimage in
consequence declined. With the restoration of a great part of the
relics to the church of St. Giles in 1862, and the discovery of his
former tomb there in 1865, the pilgrimages have recommenced. Besides
the city of St-Gilles, which sprang up around the abbey, nineteen other
cities bear his name, St-Gilles, Toulouse, and a multitude of French
cities, Antwerp, Bridges, and Tournai in Belgium, Cologne and Bamberg,
in Germany, Prague and Gran in Austria-Hungary, Rome and Bologna in
Italy, possess celebrated relics of St. Giles. In medieval art he is a
frequent subject, being always depicted with his symbol, the hind. His
feast is kept on 1 September. On this day there are also commemorated
another St. Giles, an Italian hermit of the tenth century (Acta SS.,
XLI, 305), and a Blessed Giles, d. about 1203, a Cistercian abbot of
Castaneda in the Diocese of Astorga, Spain (op. cit. XLI, 308).
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
1
Thessalonians 4:9-11; Psalm 98:1, 7-8, 9;
Matthew 25:14-30
Jesus told his
disciples this parable: “A man going on a journey called in his
servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five
talents; to another, two; to a third, one – to each according to his
ability. Then he went away. Immediately the one who received five
talents went and traded with them, and made another five. Likewise, the
one who received two made another two. But the man who received one
went off and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master’s money.
After a long time the master of those servants came back and settled
accounts with them. The one who had received five talents came forward
bringing the additional five. He said, ‘Master, you gave me five
talents. See, I have made five more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well
done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small
matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your
master’s joy.’ Then the one who had received two talents also came
forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I have made
two more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful
servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you
great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’ Then the one
who had received the one talent came forward and said, ‘Master, I knew
you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and
gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and
buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.’ His master said to
him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest
where I did not plant and gather where I did not scatter? Should you
not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back
with interest on my return? Now then! Take the talent from him and give
it to the one with ten. For to everyone who has, more will be given and
he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will
be taken away. And throw this useless servant into the darkness
outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’” (Matthew 25:14-30)
On one
occasion our
Lord, having been accused of violating the Sabbath by curing someone on
the Sabbath day, said that his Father is ever at work, and therefore so
is he. St John tells us that thereupon the Jews took up stones to stone
him because he not only broke the Sabbath but spoke of God as his very
own
Father, thus making himself equal to God. This was one of many
statements by our Lord that revealed his own divine nature, but it also
tells us something of the
Father. In that text it tells us that the Father is a worker. He is
ever at work - and therefore the Son is ever at work. We ought look on
God the holy Trinity as actively at work in creation and in the
sanctification of his creatures. God is very enterprising and we see in
the work of creation and then especially in the work of the redemption
of the world from sin a mighty undertaking in process. God strains
every nerve, as it were, to achieve his goals for us. There is nothing
he is not prepared to do to attain our good. If we wish to be his true
and worthy children we must strive to be like him, just as in his work
our Lord stated to his critics that he was constantly doing as his
Father did. Being like God means being compassionate and merciful (as
our Lord says elsewhere) and it means also that we be people who work
and strive to achieve our goals. Those goals should be done for him.
Our Lord tells his disciples today (Matthew
25:14-30) a parable of the master
going away on the long journey and entrusting his property to them and
he expected them to put what he gave them to work and produce, each
according to his ability. That is an image of life. We have been
entrusted with responsibilities and we are expected to fulfil those
responsibilities and bear fruit for the Master each according to our
ability. The parable teaches that the Master detests laziness.
But our Lord’s parable is especially directed, it would seem, to the
ordinary man of very ordinary abilities and circumstances. The centre of
attention is the one who was entrusted with only one talent. The one who
received the five talents got to work immediately and made five more, and
the one given the two immediately set to work and made two more. But the one
who received the one did nothing with it at all. He did not even think of at
least depositing it in the bank and so gaining some interest on it (and in
the process at least covering its depreciation). He was lazy and refused to
put himself out. So he lost everything and was thrown out into the darkness.
All this is to say that it is not enough to say
to God
that I haven’t done any positive harm. God will be asking what positive good
have I done. He will be wanting to see how I have advanced his interests in
the world and how I have served to give greater glory and honour to him. No
matter how little a person I am in the eyes of others, God expects me to be
enterprising for him. He expects me to work and to work for him in
everything I do, no matter how ordinary it may seem. Moreover, the
concentration in the parable on the little man, on the one with one talent
only, helps to alert us to the great importance that God places in the
ordinary person. Imagine what a difference to the world would be made if
that sleeping giant Everyman, as we might call him, were to rise from his
slumber to serve God! Imagine the difference if all the little persons -
millions of them - took his or her ordinary vocation with great seriousness.
There are Christians teaching at University, in politics, in the
professions, at the workbench, in the trades, and so many of them do little
to bear witness to the truth of Jesus. We could say that Christ will only be
brought to the heart of the world if the ordinary man takes up the challenge
and makes it par excellence the work of his life.
Let us reflect on
today’s parable (Matthew
25:14-30) and think of the
judgment on our work in life that awaits us. Let us take seriously and
gratefully the work in life that God has given us and ask him to help
us be enterprising and never to give up on it. Where God has placed us,
that is our field of work for him until he calls us elsewhere. If we
have been given but one talent, let us put it to work.
(E.J.Tyler)
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You who for an earthly love have gone through so much, do you
really believe that you love Christ when you are not willing — for him!
— to suffer that humiliation?
(The Way,
no.165)
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In what way do Christians
participate in political and social life?
The lay faithful take part directly in political and social life
by
animating temporal realities with a Christian spirit and collaborating
with all as authentic witnesses of the Gospel and agents of peace and
justice. (CCC 2442)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.519)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
I call to you all
day long, have mercy on me, O Lord.
You
are good and forgiving, full of love for all who call on you (Ps 85: 3.5)
Almighty God, every good
thing comes from you. Fill our hearts with love for you,
increase our faith, and by your constant care protect the good
you have given us.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September 2) The
martyrs of September It is common knowledge that in
France on the eve of the great revolution of 1789 there were a number
of Catholic religious, priests and bishops who could scarcely be called
“good shepherds.” In contrast to these worldly churchmen, there were
other clerics who made up for the weakness of their brothers by
defending the faith even with their lives. Best known among these
Christian heroes were the clerics executed in September, 1792. Once
established, the revolutionary government had claimed the “republican”
right to take control of the Catholic Church in France. In 1790 it
enacted a “constitution” or law that denied to the pope any authority
over French Catholicism. Each French priest and bishop was ordered to
take an oath to uphold this law. Some priests did so. Most of them
decided they could not, because they would then be denying the
universal authority of the popes. For this refusal they would
eventually suffer. The “liberty” for which the French Revolution was
fought, was not very consistent. As the Revolution moved on, its
leadership came more and more into the hands of extremists. In 1792,
the radical Jacobins determined to punish with death not only the
aristocrats, but clergy who had refused the oath. The “non-jurors” — those who had refused the oath
— were arrested en masse in August,
1792, and herded into several Parisian monasteries out of which the
resident monks had been driven. These prisoners were priests, bishops
and religious from many dioceses. Then on September 2, a band of
violent armed men, perhaps 150 in number, was sent by the “Committee of
Vigilance” to one after the other of these temporary prisons. One
detail arrived at the Abbey of St. Germain just when a number of
prisoners got there, transferred from other places of detention. The
executioners shot them down in cold blood. Then they went to the old
Carmelite monastery, where another group of cutthroats joined them.
They ordered all the prisoners to come out into the garden, even the
oldest and most disabled. The clerics had already discussed once more
the question of taking the oath, and all had agreed they could not and
would not subscribe to it. Now the gang fell upon the first priests
they met and cut them down. Then they called out, “The Archbishop of
Arles!” Archbishop John du Lau of Arles was praying in the chapel. When
summoned, he came out and he said, “I am he whom you seek.” Thereupon,
they cracked his skull, stabbed him and trampled him underfoot. Then
the leader set up a “tribunal” before which the imprisoned were herded
and ordered to take the oath. All refused; so, as they passed down the
stairway, they were hacked to pieces by the murderers. The bishop of
Beauvais had earlier been wounded in the leg. When summoned, he
answered, “I do not refuse to die with the others, but I cannot walk. I
beg you to have the kindness to carry me where you wish me to go.” For
a moment, his courtesy silenced the assassins. But, when he, too,
refused the oath, he was killed like the rest. Later on the purge was
carried out elsewhere in France. Some 200 clergymen fell that
September, and they were only a small percentage of the 1500 clergy,
laymen and laywomen who were massacred in 1792 alone. (Saints)
Pope Pius XI beatified 191 of the priest
martyrs, in 1926, assigning to them the title of “Blessed John du Lau
and Companions, Martyrs.” They had been the helpless victims of wild
revolutionary ideology. As usual, however, their heroism in the defence
of the papacy was remembered long after the names of their
blood-thirsty executioners had been forgotten. They saved the
reputation of France as “eldest daughter of the Church.”
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Sirach 3:17-18,
20, 28-29; Psalm 68:4-5, 6-7, 10-11; Hebrews
12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14
On a Sabbath Jesus
went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the
people there were observing him carefully. He told a parable to those
who had been invited, noticing how they were choosing the places of
honour at the table. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding
banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honour. A more
distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host
who invited both of you may approach you and say, ‘Give your place to
this man,’ and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the
lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, go and take the lowest
place so that when the host comes to you he may say, ‘My friend, move
up to a higher position.’ Then you will enjoy the esteem of your
companions at the table. For every one who exalts himself will be
humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Then he said
to the host who invited him, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not
invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy
neighbours, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the
lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability
to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the
righteous.” (Luke 14:1, 7-14)
There have been many
religions in the history of man that have been not notably concerned
for the poor. Many have been distinguished for their striving for the
Absolute — whatever be the name they give to it or the image they have
of it — while often being forgetful of the needs of man and the world.
Among the many things that revealed religion places at the centre is
concern for and love of those in need. In the first instance this
surely derives from its teaching about the creation and very nature of
man. As we
read in the first pages of the Bible, man is not simply the greatest of
all the living things to come into being from the word of God. Man is
created in the image and likeness of God and is,
therefore, a child of God and God is his Father. God is the Father of
all mankind, and every man and woman is a child made in his likeness.
We may surely regard this fatherly creation of man — man who is “little
less than a god” as the psalm expresses it — as something of a
primordial covenant conferring on the least endowed and the least
circumstanced an inalienable dignity. He is a child of God made like
unto his heavenly Father and is a member of God’s vast family. Above
and beyond the dignity inherent in his very creation, the dignity of
every man features prominently in the developing covenants God forged
with his chosen people. The Mosaic legislation required constant
consideration for slaves, for sojourners and the needy, and the
prophets time and again denounced a religion of sacrifices and
oblations while flouting and neglecting the poor. God is portrayed as
wishing to have nothing to do with such a religion. Indeed, the whole
of the Law and the Prophets can be reduced, Christ said, to loving God
with all our heart and loving our neighbour as our self. So then, love
of neighbour — a real love and care, a love equal to that which we have
for ourselves — is an unavoidable linchpin of revealed religion.
But Christ
developed
this to what we might call stark levels. On one occasion he was asked,
in the context of love for neighbour, who is my neighbour? He proceeded
to tell the story of the Good Samaritan showing that one’s neighbour is
not just one’s family member, one’s associate in religion, or one’s
countryman, but anyone in need. Any person in need is my neighbour. We
must love anyone who is in need as we love our own very self. But
Christ gave a new commandment, and that is that we are to love one
another as he has loved us. That is the level of love which a true
disciple of Christ extends to the poor. St Paul writes that though he
was rich because he was God, Christ gave all this up and became as we
are and humbler still. He did all this so that we who are poor might
become rich. Christ loved the lowly and the poor, and apart from his
countless miracles on their behalf we read that when Judas went out at
the Last Supper some thought that he had gone to give some money to the
poor. This indicates that the giving of money to the poor was a
practice of the Twelve, instilled by the Master. Our Lord taught that
our concern for the poor will be an essential element in our judgment.
Our Lord describes in Matthew 25 the final judgment of Christ on each
and all. He will be our judge, and at our judgment he will say to those
on his right, come you whom my Father has blessed, for when I was
hungry you gave me food. When did we do this, the blessed will ask.
“Whenever you did this to the least of these brothers of mine, you did
it to me.” So Christ our Lord and God identifies entirely with the poor
and the lowly such that whatever we do to them he counts as having been
done to him. Therefore we serve and love Christ himself when we serve
and love the poor. They are to be reverenced and loved as we reverence
and love Christ himself, and we shall be rewarded greatly if we do
this. In our Gospel passage today (Luke 14:1,
7-14) our
Lord speaks of this to the leading Pharisee.
All through the history
of the Church there have been outstanding and saintly examples of
Christians who have taken our Lord’s teaching to heart. They have loved
and served the poor and in this way have reminded the Church’s children
and all mankind of the dignity of the poor and of their right to
reverence and care. They have also reminded all of the judgment to come
on those who serve the poor and also on those who neglect the poor when
they have been in a position to help them. Let us take our cue from the
likes of Blessed (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta who lived a holy life
given over to seeing Christ in the poor. This is revealed religion, the
religion God has taught to us. This is the service he wants of those
who strive to be pleasing to him. In this way we show our love for
Christ and become Christ-like ourselves.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2443-2449
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You write: 'Father, I have a... toothache in
my heart'. — I won't laugh, because I realize that you need a good
dentist to do a few 'extractions' for you.
If only you were willing!...
(The Way,
no.166)
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By what is love for the poor
inspired?
Love for the poor is inspired by the Gospel of the Beatitudes and by
the example of Jesus in his constant concern for the poor. Jesus said,
“Whatever you have done to the least of my brethren, you have done to
me” (Matthew 25:40). Love for the poor shows itself through the
struggle against material poverty and also against the many forms of
cultural, moral, and religious poverty. The spiritual and corporal
works of mercy and the many charitable institutions formed throughout
the centuries are a concrete witness to the preferential love for the
poor which characterizes the disciples of Jesus. (CCC 2443-2449,
2462-2463)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.520)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Monday of the twenty second week of Ordinary Time II
(September
3) Saint
Gregory the
Great, pope and doctor of the Church (540?-604) Coming
events cast their shadows before: Gregory was the prefect of Rome
before he was 30. After five years in office he resigned, founded six
monasteries on his Sicilian estate and became a Benedictine monk in his
own home at Rome. Ordained a priest, he became one of the pope's seven
deacons, and also served six years in the East as papal nuncio in
Constantinople. He was recalled to become abbot, and at the age of 50
was elected pope by the clergy and people of Rome. He was direct and
firm. He removed unworthy priests from office, forbade taking money for
many services, emptied the papal treasury to ransom prisoners of the
Lombards and to care for persecuted Jews and the victims of plague and
famine. He was very concerned about the conversion of England, sending
40 monks from his own monastery. He is known for his reform of the
liturgy, for strengthening respect for doctrine. Whether he was largely
responsible for the revision of "Gregorian" chant is disputed. Gregory
lived in a time of perpetual strife with invading Lombards and
difficult relations with the East. When Rome itself was under attack,
it was he who went to interview the Lombard king. An Anglican historian
has written: "It is impossible to conceive what would have been the
confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages
without the medieval papacy; and of the medieval papacy, the real
father is Gregory the Great." His book, Pastoral Care, on the duties
and qualities of a bishop, was read for centuries after his death. He
described bishops mainly as physicians whose main duties were preaching
and the enforcement of discipline. In his own down-to-earth preaching,
Gregory was skilled at applying the daily gospel to the needs of his
listeners. Called "the Great," Gregory has been given a place with
Augustine, Ambrose and Jerome as one of the four key doctors of the
Western Church.
Gregory was content to be a monk, but he willingly served the Church in
other ways when asked. He sacrificed his own preferences in many ways,
especially when he was called to be Bishop of Rome. Once he was called
to public service, Gregory gave his considerable energies completely to
this work. "Perhaps it is not after all so difficult for a man to part
with his possessions, but it is certainly most difficult for him to
part with himself. To renounce what one has is a minor thing; but to
renounce what one is, that is asking a lot" (St. Gregory, Homilies on the Gospels).
(Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture
today: 1 Thessalonians
4:13-18; Psalm 96:1 and 3-5, 11-13; Luke 4:16-30
Jesus came to
Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into
the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a
scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the
passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has
sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the
blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable
to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant
and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at
him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in
your hearing.” And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the
gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Is this not
the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this
proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native
place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’” And he said,
“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of
Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe
famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah
was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again,
there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the
people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the
hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But
he passed through the midst of them and went away. (Luke 4:16-30)
Little is known of
the history of the town of Nazareth. I have heard it stated that the
town began a century or two before the birth of Jesus, but I do not
know what is the basis of that information. Whatever of that, the
greatest thing that happened in the entire history of the town
from its beginnings to the present was the presence in it for thirty
years of the Son of God made man, together with the most holy Mary his mother,
and
Joseph his holy foster-father. Nothing can compare with that fact.
Jesus Christ was a townsman of Nazareth. Connected with this was the
fact that the people with whom our Lord lived - with the exception of
his own immediate family, of course - had no idea of his exalted
status. They did not know that he was the Messiah nor that he was the
Son of God. Undoubtedly they could see that he had altogether special
qualities, but he blended so well into his social setting and family
circle that was taken largely for granted. At least this is the
impression we gather from various details of the Gospels. Our Gospel
text today (Luke 4:16-30) narrates how Jesus went to the
synagogue as was his custom, implying that they had accompanied him to
the synagogue, had seen him there Sabbath after Sabbath, had heard him
read perhaps, and had seen him and mixed with him in so many other
settings. Many had grown up with him and had lived with him
daily. The stunning upshot of their years with Jesus is their
response to the Gospel. When he revealed who he really was they
rejected him violently.
If we contrast the reaction of those who had lived with him with that of his
first disciples, what a contrast there is! Let us take the case of
Nathanael. Philip came to him and told him that they had found the Messiah.
Nathanael appears to have been sceptical: “Nazareth? Can anything good come
from that place?” And so he was taken to Jesus. Jesus showed that he knew
him in an altogether special sense, a sense beyond ordinary human means, and
Nathanael responded with a total and magnificent faith. We read, “Jesus saw
Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, ‘Here is a true child of
Israel. There is no duplicity in him.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘How do you
know me?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Before Philip called you, I saw
you under the fig tree.’ Nathanael answered him, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of
God; you are the King of Israel.’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Do you
believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see
greater things than this’.” (John 1:45-51).
Nathanael’s faith was immediate
and magnificent, and it attained the faith which John the Evangelist saw as the very purpose of writing his Gospel which was
“that you may learn to believe Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and
so believing find life through his name (John 21:31). Let us appreciate
the sad and miserable response to the Gospel on the part of our Lord’s
townspeople who had known him so well and yet so little, by considering
the magnificent response of our Lord’s very first disciples.
Let us cherish
dearly the gift of faith in Jesus Christ which we have received, and
nourish it into a great flame. St Paul tells us that from before the
world began God chose us in Christ to be holy and full of love in his
sight. It begins with and is based on faith in Christ’s person. What a
tragedy if, having the gift of faith, we allow it to weaken and die. By
contrast, what a wonder if we cherish this faith and allow it to lead
us to love and holiness.
(E.J.Tyler)
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'If only I had broken it off at the start!'
you said. — Let us hope you haven't to repeat that tardy complaint.
(The Way,
no.167)
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What is one’s duty
toward the truth?
Every person is called to sincerity and truthfulness in acting and
speaking. Everyone has the duty to seek the truth, to adhere to it and
to order one’s whole life in accordance with its demands. In Jesus
Christ the whole of God’s truth has been made manifest. He is “the
truth”. Those who follow him live in the Spirit of truth and guard
against duplicity, dissimulation, and hypocrisy. (CCC 2464-2470, 2504)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.521)
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Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 4) St. Rosalia Hermitess, greatly venerated at Palermo and in the whole of Sicily of which she in patroness. Her feast is celebrated on 4 September. A special feast of the translation of her relics is kept in Sicily 15 June. There is no account of her before Valerius Rossi (about 1590), though churches were dedicated in her honour in 1237. Her Vita (Acta SS., 11 Sept., 278) which, according to the Bollandist J. Stilting, is compiled from local traditions, paintings, and inscriptions, says: She was the daughter of Sinibald, Lord of Quisquina and of Rosa, descended from the family of Charlemagne; in youthful days she left home and hid herself in a cave near Bivona and later in another of Monte Pellegrino near Palermo, in which she died and was buried. In 1624 her remains were discovered and brought to the Cathedral of Palermo. Urban VIII put her name into the Roman Martyrology. Whether before her retirement she belonged to a religious community, is not known. The Basilians, in their Martyrology, claim her as a member. She is often represented as a Basilian nun with a Greek cross in her hand. Many of her pictures may be found in the Acta SS. (Saints)
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Scripture today:
1
Thessalonians 5:1-6, 9-11; Psalm 27:1, 4,
13-14; Luke 4:31-37
Jesus went down to
Capernaum, a town of Galilee. He taught them on the sabbath, and they
were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the
synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he
cried out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of
Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One
of God!” Jesus rebuked him and said, “Be quiet! Come out of him!” Then
the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him
without doing him any harm. They were all amazed and said to one
another, “What is there about his word? For with authority and power he
commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” And news of him
spread everywhere in the surrounding region. (Luke 4:31-37)
In
the history of the world there have been countless kings and rulers who
set out to conquer. Philip of Macedon in the fourth century BC set out
to conquer the Greek peninsular and succeeded. His son Alexander set
out on an extraordinary adventure to conquer the known world and had he
lived long enough he would surely have succeeded. He was unstoppable in
his military brilliance, while committing atrocity after atrocity in
the process. Julius Caesar set out to conquer and ruthlessly succeeded.
So too did Ghengis Khan, Napoleon
Bonaparte, and many others. They saw themselves as kings and were
determined to establish their kingdoms. But of course, whatever they
planned and achieved was the work of man and in due course it all
crumbled. Their kingship did not last. However, God planned another
kingdom from all eternity and he revealed through the prophets that it
was coming. It would come from the dynasty of David whose descendant
would be its Messiah-King and it would last forever. The Christian
believes that Jesus is the Messiah and that he whose kingdom will never
end is the Son of God made man. As our Lord said to Pontius Pilate
before he went to his redeeming death, his is not a kingdom of this
world. In our Gospel passage today we see our Lord beginning the
establishment of his kingdom. He overthrows the demons. We remember how
after his baptism by John the Baptist he was led by the Holy Spirit
into the desert to be tempted by Satan. There the first great
confrontation began. Satan took him to a high mountain and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world and claimed that they were all his. Much
of this claim is true but in his pride and dark vanity Satan presumed
to present himself to Jesus as the lord of the entire world. He told
Jesus that if he acknowledged him, Satan, as lord, then the whole world
would be his for the asking.
Satan could see that the man before him had the makings of being the Lord of
the world. He was offering him a deal and Christ would have none of it. He
would be King of kings and Lord of lords but on God’s terms and for the sake
of his heavenly Father. He had come to win the world and to hand it back to
his heavenly Father. God had sent his champion to reclaim the world from the
influence of Satan and his demons. There was nothing like it in its scale -
this man Jesus was setting out to conquer the whole world and to establish
here on earth the kingdom of heaven. It is the project of the universe and
of human history. It is the one thing that matters, and in our Gospel scene
we see our Lord taking the fight to the enemy. “He taught them
on
the sabbath, and they were astonished
at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the synagogue there
was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out in a
loud voice, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you
come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!’ Jesus
rebuked him and said, ‘Be quiet! Come out of him!’ Then the demon threw
the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any
harm.” (Luke
4:31-37).
Jesus is shown as one with unassailable authority and power, though it
was used solely for his spiritual mission. The devils could see that
this was one they could not possibly deal with or penetrate. On their
own admission, he is the Holy One of God and has the power to destroy
them. He is wholly good and all powerful, the absolutely ideal king
whose victory is assured. Satan made the mistake of thinking that in
orchestrating his death through betrayal and scheming and stubbornness
the kingdom of this all-holy man would be at an end. But his death
turned out to be, in God’s plan, the very means of victory.
Let us see very
clearly the fundamental issues at stake. It is a matter of good and
evil, or more precisely, God and all that is not God. Two great
standards are hoisted. The one is the standard of Christ, the other is
the standard of Satan. Christ has his means of victory and those means
are summed up in the Cross. Satan has his means and they are those of
sin and self. Christ will win so let us stand with Christ and live out
this stand every day of our lives.
(E.J.Tyler)
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'I was amused to hear you speak of the
"account" that our Lord will demand of you. No, for none of you will he
be a judge — in the harsh sense of the word; he will simply be Jesus.'
These lines, written by a good bishop, have consoled more than one
troubled heart, and could well console yours.
(The Way,
no.168)
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How does one bear witness to the truth?
A Christian must bear witness to the truth of the Gospel in every field
of his activity, both public and private, and also if necessary, with
the sacrifice of his very life. Martyrdom is the supreme witness given
to the truth of the faith. (CCC 2471-2474, 2505-2506)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.522)
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Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 5) St. Bertin was born about the beginning of the 7th century near Constance, France, and received his religious formation at the abbey of Luxeuil, at that time, the model abbey for the rather strict Rule of St. Columban. About 639, together with two other monks, he joined St. Omer, Bishop of Therouanne, who had for two years been evangelizing the pagan Morini in the low-lying marshy country of the Pas-de-Calais. In this almost totally idolatrous region, these holy missionary monks founded a monastery which came to be called St. Mommolin after its first Abbot. After eight arduous years of preaching the Faith for Christ, they founded a second monastery at Sithiu, dedicated to St. Peter. St. Bertin ruled it for nearly sixty years and made it famous; accordingly, after his death it was called St. Bertin and gave birth to the town of St. Omer. St. Bertin practiced the greatest austerities and was in constant communion with God. He also travelled much and trained disciples who went forth to preach the Faith to others. Among others, he selected St. Winnoc to found a monastery at Wormhoudt, near Dunkirk, and this saint figures in many medieval calendars. At an advanced age (past 100), this zealous preacher of Christ died, surrounded by his sorrowing monks. (Saints)
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Scripture today:
Colossians
1:1-8; Psalm 52:10, 11; Luke
4:38-44
After Jesus left
the synagogue, he entered the house of Simon. Simon’s mother-in-law was
afflicted with a severe fever, and they interceded with him about her.
He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up
immediately and waited on them. At sunset, all who had people sick with
various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them
and cured them. And demons also came out from many, shouting, “You are
the Son of God.” But he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak
because they knew that he was the Christ. At daybreak, Jesus left and
went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him, and when
they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them. But he
said to them, “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of
the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.” And he
was preaching in the synagogues of Judea. (Luke 4:38-44)
St Jerome who was
writing and translating in the early years of the fifth century wrote
that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. Such a
statement implies two things, among others. The Scriptures are the
Church’s special instrument for introducing those whom she evangelizes
to the knowledge of Christ, and Christ is the meaning of the
Scriptures. Now, since Christ is the object of the Scriptures, those
parts of the Scriptures (Old and New Testaments) that speak most
explicitly of Christ are especially important. For this
reason the Gospels are the crowning books of the Bible because they set
forth with greatest clarity the person of the Lord.
The Christian
ought make great use of the Gospels to contemplate the person and
actions and teaching of Jesus. By placing himself prayerfully and
contemplatively in the scenes of the Gospels the Christian will come to
know and love Jesus. Cardinal Newman pointed out in his Grammar of
Assent (1870) that the imagination is the special faculty for a
lively
religion. By means of the religious imagination a person comes to know
the divine Objects of religion not as conclusions of the reason but as
if they are objects of sight. In this way they are known as realities
and not just as notions. So then, let us place ourselves in the Gospel
scene of today (Luke 4:38-44) and contemplate the
person of Jesus as if we are observing him - which we do by means of
our religious imagination, guided by a disciplined and religiously
docile reason. He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings, God
himself become man, the divine Son of the divine Father, the Second
Person of the three divine Persons each of whom is the one only
almighty God. He moves among men as a man that he is, thus giving them
immediate access in him to the eternal God.
He enters the house
of Simon and Simon’s mother-in-law “was afflicted with a severe
fever, and they interceded with him about her. He stood over her,
rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and waited
on them.” (Luke
4:38-44) The
Incarnation of the Son of God ought be a perpetual source of grateful
wonder to us! St Paul writes that in Christ was the fullness of the godhead
bodily, and here we have the Lord of all familiarly entering a home and
being approached to heal Simon’s mother-in-law.
At his word the fever left her and such is the sovereign and almighty power of the
word of Jesus that she immediately rises to wait on them. We are
reminded of the first page of the bible when God said, let there be the
world and so it was. Here now the same God is among men restoring
broken humanity with his same divine power. “At sunset, all who had
people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his
hands on each of them and cured them.” Power is at work restoring
wounded man. It is an almighty power that reveals the mercy and
compassion of God. The devils, driven out by Christ, guess who it
is who is so powerful and impregnable to their advances. They shout
“You are the Son of God.” But he silenced them and did not allow them
to speak because, we are told, “they knew that he was the Christ.” All
through history man has appealed to the powers above for compassion and
aid. He is weak and fallen, subject to threats that injure and destroy
him. He needs the compassion and mercy of One who is all-powerful. He
needs salvation especially from his moral flaws that take him and
others to death. Jesus is the answer to the cry of humanity and he is
the focus and embodiment of the religion God has revealed and to which
man aspires. Let us place ourselves constantly in the company of Jesus
and allow him to be the focus of our life.
Not only is Christ
sent by the Father to be the object of our love and veneration, but he
stands forth as our example. In his goodness he is the example of what
it means to be human. He is the model for Everyman and St Paul tells us
that we are to put on the mind of Christ: “Let this mind be in you that
was in Christ Jesus.” Christ is mankind’s exemplar, and the challenge
for every Christian is to bring this message to the world. The world
awaits its evangelization. Let all members of Christ’s Church proclaim
the person of Jesus to a broken world.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Suffering overwhelms you because you take it like a coward. Meet
it bravely, with a Christian spirit: and you will regard it as a
treasure.
(The Way,
no.169)
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What is forbidden by
the eighth commandment?
The eighth
commandment forbids:
* false witness, perjury, and lying, the gravity of
which is measured by the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the
intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims;
* rash judgment, slander, defamation and calumny
which diminish or destroy the good reputation and honour to which every
person has a right;
* flattery, adulation, or complaisance, especially
if directed to serious sins or toward the achievement of illicit
advantages.
A sin committed against truth demands reparation if it has caused harm
to others.
(CCC 2475-2487, 2507-2509)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.523)
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Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 6) Bl. Bertrand of Garrigue (+1230) French, priest, one of the original Dominicans, beloved companion of St. Dominic, ascetic, established the Order throughout France. Credited many miracles during life and after death OP (AC) Born at Garrigue, diocese of Nîmes, France, c. 1195; died near there; cultus confirmed by Leo XIII. Bertrand was a secular priest under the Cistercians, missioner, and ardent opponent of Albigensianism when he first met Saint Dominic in the party of Bishop Diego. Bertrand may have been the one to recruit Dominic in the battle against the French heretics because they worked closely together in this mission for the rest of their lives. Bertrand joined the first Dominican friars by receiving the habit at Toulouse in 1216. Dominic left him in charge of the community when he travelled to Rome to seek papal approval of the order. Bertrand's zeal and experience played an important role in the founding of the Friar Preachers. When the brothers were sent out in little groups on missions, Bertrand was left in Paris with Matthew of France, where he helped to form the Dominican tradition of learning and governed the first foundation at Paris. While Bertrand's advice and prayers helped to establish the order, he is best remembered as the closest friend and travelling companion of Saint Dominic, until he was appointed as provincial of Provence. He witnessed the miracles and heavenly favors bestowed upon his friend and provided us with insightful testimony about the heart and mind of the founder. Bertrand himself was credited with many miracles, both during his life and after his death. Others considered him a "second Dominic" in austerity and holiness, but he humbly overlooked his own claims to sanctity in his loving insistence on those of his friend. Bertrand was preaching a mission to the Cistercian sisters of Saint Mary of the Woods near Garrigue, when he fell sick and died. He was buried in the sisters' cemetery until the frequency of miracles suggested that he should be given a more suitable shrine. His relics were lost and shrine destroyed during the religious wars, but pilgrimages were still made to "Saint Bertrand's Cemetery" until the time of the French Revolution (Benedictines, Dorcy). (Saints)
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Scripture today:
Colossians
1:9-14; Psalm 98:2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6;
Luke 5:1-11
While the crowd was
pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing
by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into
one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a
short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds
from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put
out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in
reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this,
they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They
signalled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them.
They came and filled both boats so that the boats were in danger of
sinking. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and
said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For astonishment
at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of
Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be
catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left
everything and followed him. (Luke 5:1-11)
If you wish to view a video
broadcast of the followiing reflection on today's Gospel, click here
Christ
It is
important when we are reading Holy Scripture to remember that while the
Holy Spirit used numerous authors he himself was the principal and
ultimate author giving unity to the entire corpus that makes up both
Old and New Testaments. So when reading any particular passage of the
New Testament we bear in mind its connection with the rest of the
Scriptures because the whole has a common divine author. In our Gospel
passage today (Luke
5:1-11) our
Lord is standing near the lake of Gennesaret teaching the throngs of
people pressing all around him. He sees two boats close to the bank and
he alights one of them to teach the crowds from there. St Luke tells us
it was Simon’s boat. So we contemplate Christ seated in Simon’s boat
teaching as the Master. I suppose many would pass over this detail as
having no special significance, but in view of the special vocation of
Simon as spelt out in the Gospels Luke in describing this factual scene
was surely giving his readers a pictorial reminder of a special feature
of Christ’s Church. We remember that great occasion narrated in a
different Gospel when having received Simon’s declaration of faith in
him as the Messiah and Son of God, Christ appointed him to be the rock
on which he would build his Church. To him Christ gave the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, and promised that whatever he bound on earth would
be ratified in heaven. Well now, in our Gospel scene Luke intimates to
the believing reader more about Simon and the Church of which he will
be the visible rock. Christ will continue to teach vast throngs from
Simon’s boat which is his Church. Luke gives us more reminders. Christ
tells him to cast his net into deep water which he does and a
huge number of fish are caught. From now on, Christ tells Simon, it is
men he will catch. It is a pointer to the Church of the future
and reminds us that Christ the Saviour abides in the Church’s midst as
it carries out its mission to being the Saviour to the world.
A great student of
the religions of the world in the early decades of the twentieth
century was the German scholar Rudolf Otto. His book The
Idea of the Holy analysed the sense of the holy at the heart of religion. The
religious sense is, so thought Otto, a sense of the numinous as something
both terrible and fascinating. It involves awe, fear and a profound
attraction. Otto’s description hints at the sense of sin but does not give
it its due. Simon’s reaction to the miracle wrought by Christ before his
very eyes manifests the authentic reaction to the holy. He falls down at the
knees of Jesus and does not merely express wonderment at the divine power at
work in the catch of fish, but his profound sense of sin before the One who
is all-holy. Christ is all-powerful and somehow his power reveals his
holiness. His power reveals many other things
but here it is his transcendent and incomparable holiness which Simon finds
to be so overwhelming. He experiences a vast separation between his own
sinfulness and the holiness of the one who has just manifested such
power. “Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” He and all his
companions were completely overcome by the catch they had made. In all
efforts which the Christian expends to serve Christ and do his will, he
ought have a lively sense of his own sinfulness and of Christ’s
holiness. This sense of sin is something modern man
characteristically lacks. Pope Pius XII once wrote that the sin of the
century - speaking of the last century - is the lack of the sense of
sin. That culpable lack has been growing for centuries and it is, of
course, to do with the lack of a sense of God in the mind of secular
man and his culture. It is something that can afflict and influence the
Church’s faithful, immersed as they are in the world. We need to
develop a deep sense of God as the Holy One, and of Christ his Son as
the Holy One of God. Even the devils knew this. We who are children of
a secular culture are in danger of being insensitive to the holiness of
Christ.
Let us ponder on
the reminders and implications of our Gospel scene today. Christ’s
Church is that of Simon Peter, and in that Church Christ teaches the
world and casts the net for catch upon catch. Let us be close to Jesus
and spend our lives adoring him as the Holy One of God, the one who
will cleanse us from our sins and who will bring this cleansing to the
world of sinful men.
(E.J.Tyler)
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How clear the way! How easily seen the
obstacles! What good weapons to overcome them!... — And nevertheless,
what side-tracking and what stumbling! Isn't it true?
That fine thread — that chain: that chain of wrought iron — of which
you and I are conscious and which you don't want to break, that is what
draws you from your way and makes you stumble and even fall.
Why do you hesitate? — Cut it... and advance!
(The Way, no.170)
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What is required by the eighth commandment?
The eighth
commandment requires respect for the truth accompanied by the
discretion of charity in the field of communication and the imparting
of information, where the personal and common good, the protection of
privacy and the danger of scandal must all be taken into account; in
respecting professional secrets which must be kept, save in exceptional
cases for grave and proportionate reasons; and also in respecting
confidences given under the seal of secrecy. (CCC 2488-2492, 2510-2511)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.524)
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Friday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 7) Saint Regina is a second century saint who was born in Autun, France. She also called Reine and Reyne and is known almost entirely through legend. According to tradition, she was the daughter of Clement Alise, a pagan in Burgundy, and was raised a Christian by a local woman after the death of her mother during childbirth. When her father learned of her Christianity, he threw her out of the house and she was forced to live with the woman who raised her. Regina was for a time a shepherdess. The local prefect, Olybrius, became enamoured with her and demanded her hand in marriage. When she refused, she was arrested as a Christian, tortured, and beheaded. (Saints)
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Scripture today: Colossians
1:15-20; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 4,
5; Luke 5:33-39
The scribes and
Pharisees said to Jesus, “The disciples of John the
Baptist fast often and offer prayers, and the disciples of the
Pharisees do the same; but yours eat and drink.” Jesus answered them,
“Can you make the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with
them? But the days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away
from them, then they will fast in those days.” And he also told them a
parable. “No one tears a piece from a new cloak
to patch an old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from
it will not match the old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into
old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it
will be spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be
poured into fresh wineskins. And no one who has been drinking old wine
desires new, for he says,
‘The old is good.’” (Luke 5:33-39)
If you wish to
view a video broadcast of the following reflection on today's Gospel,
click here
Our Gospel scene
today presents us with the scribes and Pharisees
coming to our Lord and pointing to the contrast between the religious
practice he allows and that inculcated by both John the Baptist and the
scribes and Pharisees. They each taught their disciples to fast and
pray whereas he,
Jesus, allowed his disciples to “eat and drink.” They
were setting our Lord within the context of the religion of the Old
Testament (which, of course was valid) but behind this was the
assumption that he was nothing more than a teacher or prophet of the
Old Testament. Indeed, what he was allowing would seem to be of a lower
standard than its best traditions and expectations. Our Lord in reply
alluded to the completely new phenomenon they had before them. He was
the bridegroom and what had now begun was the wedding feast, and his
disciples were the wedding guests rejoicing with the bridegroom.
His
reply fully alludes to the Old Testament and throws light on the true
meaning and expectations of the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms. God
was the Bridegroom or Husband and Israel his bride and the day would
come when there would be a great banquet for his people and for all
peoples. Our Lord was intimating that the prophecies of the Old
Testament were being now fulfilled, and this fulfilment involved
something altogether new. Its newness is illustrated in the analogies
our Lord then uses. “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an
old one. Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not
match the old cloak. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old
wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be
spilled, and the skins will be ruined. Rather, new wine must be poured
into fresh wineskins.” (Luke 5:33-39)
The religion now being revealed
in him had its roots in that of the Old Testament, but transcended it
as something new.
In what was it so new? It was new in the person of Jesus. The disciples
rejoiced in the bridegroom. He is the object of their love and attention. He
will be the object of their religion and this is what gives to the religion
Jesus was now revealing and instilling its newness. No other prophet or
teacher of the Old Testament pointed to himself as the object of religion
but Jesus does. He himself is the bridegroom and it is in him that the
disciples were rejoicing and Jesus allowed them to do this. The day would
come when he the bridegroom would be taken away from them and then they
would have to deny themselves the things that could attract them and
distract them from him. But now, they had him before them. Our Gospel
passage is a reminder to the Christian and to all who turn their hearts and
minds to the person of Christ that he himself
is the object of the heart of man
in the plan of God. The religion of the Old Testament inculcated love
of Yahweh God with the whole of one’s heart, mind, soul and strength.
Christ has come and he himself is now the object of this same undivided
and total love. The one who sees Jesus sees the Father. He is the image
of the unseen God, and is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Moreover,
everything is now new in the sense that grace upon grace is now offered
transforming the heart of the one who is Christ’s disciple enabling him
to love with a new heart. New wine would be poured into new wineskins.
Let us then place ourselves in the company of Jesus as one of his
disciples and let us do so with the joy our Lord here encourages. He is
taken from us visibly but he still lives with us. Taken from us visibly
we are to fast and pray so as to keep our hearts entirely given over to
the bridegroom of our souls, and that bridegroom is Christ the Lord. He
is preparing us for entry into the eternal wedding feast where every
tear will be wiped away.
Being a Christian
means recognizing that in Christ is found every
heavenly blessing. No one can attain access to the Father except
through him even though he can and does work through his Spirit in ways
beyond what he revealed as the normal. That normal and sure way is his
Church. Christ is found in and through his Church and he is the object
of the Church’s life and proclamation. Let us resolve never to be
separated from the living risen Jesus and let us resolve to bear
witness to him in our everyday life so that others too may find life in
him.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Surely God's Love is worth any love.
(The Way,
no.171)
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How is one
to use the means of social communication?
The information provided by the media must be at the service of the
common good. Its content must be true and – within the limits of
justice and charity – also complete. Furthermore, information must be
communicated honestly and properly with scrupulous respect for moral
laws and the legitimate rights and dignity of the person. (CCC
2493-2499, 2512)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.525)
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Feast
of the
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(Saturday of the twenty second week in Ordinary Time II)
(September 8)
The Birth of the
Virgin Mary Today the
Church celebrates the dawning of the Redemption over the world when the
Mother of the Saviour was born. The Blessed Virgin occupies a unique
place in the history of salvation, and heaven rejoices at her birth.
The Lord commissioned for her the highest mission entrusted to any
creature.
(Saints)
(For
an account of the birth of the Virgin Mary from the visions of Anne
Catherine Emmerich, click here)
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Scripture: Micah 5:1-4a or Rom 8:28-30; Psalm
13:6ab, 6c;
Matthew 1:1-16, 18-23 or
Matthew 1:18-23
This is how the
birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary
was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found
with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a
righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce
her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord
appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be
afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the
Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a
son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from
their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said
through the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a
son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.”
(Matthew 1:18-23)
Throughout the
Church’s year many saints are remembered. Their memorial
days are celebrated on the day of their entry into eternal life - in
other words, on the day of their death. So important were the lives of
a couple of them in the history of salvation that not only is the day
of their death celebrated, but also the day of their birth. The
archetype of this is our Lord himself. We celebrate his death on Good
Friday and his Resurrection on Easter Sunday (and indeed on every
Sunday), but also his birth on Christmas day. So too we celebrate not
only the death but also the birth of John the Baptist, both of which
events are narrated and celebrated in the Gospels. The case is the same
with the virgin Mary, mother of the Son of God made man. With her,
though, not only are her birth and her passing from this life
celebrated in the Church’s year but also her very conception. The
Church teaches as being divinely revealed (drawing primarily on her
great Tradition) that at the end of her mortal life she was taken body
and soul glorious into heaven. This event the Church celebrates on
August 15, the feast of the Assumption. The Church also teaches as
being divinely revealed (again, drawing primarily on her infallible
Tradition) that she was conceived free of original sin. This fact the
Church celebrates on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate
Conception. But so important is Mary the mother of God in the saving
plan of God that the Church also celebrates her very birth. This she
does on this day, September 8. Indeed, the Church celebrates not only
her conception, her birth and her passing from this life to the glory
of heaven, but many other events and titles of the virgin Mary during
the course of the year. She is the glory of our race and the
masterpiece of the Holy Spirit. She is without sin; a wholly beautiful
human being in mind, heart and soul; a person of incomparable holiness.
In thinking of the
birth of the Virgin Mary the Church places before
the faithful for their contemplation her conception of the Redeemer and
some of the circumstances associated with this event. We consider it
from the perspective of her holy betrothed, Joseph the carpenter. He
was “a righteous man” and the Church in her Tradition has thrown a
powerful light on the richness and depth of this brief description. He
was indeed most “righteous”, most “just”. As the husband of the holiest
and purest of God’s creatures and the foster-father and guardian of her
divine Son, he was of such singular holiness that the Church has
declared this protector of the Holy Family to be the heavenly guardian
of the Church here on earth till the end of time. Well then, Mary
was found by him to be with child prior to their intended marriage. The
angel of the Lord intervened to resolve his holy perplexity and to
direct him to take Mary to his home as his wife. The words of the
angel bring glory to Mary: “Joseph, son of David, do not be
afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the
Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a
son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from
their sins.” (Matthew 1:18-23) Mary was born with a
high mission and it
was to be the mother of the long awaited messianic Redeemer who, in the
event, was the Son of God made man. She was born to be the Queen-mother
of the promised King, and in heaven she intercedes in this capacity
with unfailing effect on behalf of us her children. Yet in all this
dignity that was hers her life was humble, hidden and waiting on God as
we see in our Gospel passage today. She left it to God to exalt her and
to enlighten her future husband as to her high vocation. Like her Son
she was meek and humble of heart. Her faith and trust in God and her
humility are a constant example to us. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray
for us!
Let us take Mary
into our home, the home of our heart. Joseph took Mary
to his home, and some thirty three years later her dying Son entrusted
her to his beloved disciple, who likewise took her to his home. She is
our heavenly mother in Christ, and we are her children. Let us take her
to the home of our hearts and resolve with her intercession to follow
her path which is none other than that of her son. She is the first and
the perfect Christian and is our heavenly mother.
(E.J.Tyler)
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If you don't deny yourself you will never be a soul of prayer.
(The Way,
no.172)
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What relationship exists between
truth, beauty and sacred art?
The truth is beautiful, carrying in itself the splendour of spiritual
beauty. In addition to the expression of the truth in words there are
other complementary expressions of the truth, most specifically in the
beauty of artistic works. These are the fruit both of talents given by
God and of human effort. Sacred art by being true and beautiful should
evoke and glorify the mystery of God made visible in Christ, and lead
to the adoration and love of God, the Creator and Saviour, who is the
surpassing, invisible Beauty of Truth and Love. (CCC 2500-2503,
2513)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.526)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Lord, you are just,
and the judgments you make are right.
Show mercy when you judge me, your servant. (Ps 118: 137.124)
God our Father,
you redeem us and make us your children in Christ.
Look upon us, give us true
freedom and bring us to the inheritance you promised.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September 9) St. Peter Claver
(1580-1654) Born in Spain, the
son of a farmer, Peter Claver entered the Society of Jesus and was
ordained in 1615 in Cartagena, South America, where he had made his
higher studies. Cartagena was the centre of the infamous slave trade,
where many thousands of African slaves were landed after crossing the
ocean amid inhuman conditions, and then penned like animals in yards.
Their terrible plight, corporal and spiritual, tore at the heart of the
young Jesuit and he determined to devote himself to the alleviation of
their misery. At his profession he had vowed "to be a slave of the
slaves forever," and he now began to carry out this vow. Though his
main concern was the salvation of the slaves, he realized that their
bodily misery needed attention first. "We must speak to them with our
hands," he said, "before we can speak to them with our lips." His love
and his endurance seemed boundless. Taking only a minimum of sleep, he
ministered tirelessly to the slaves, washing and tending their wounds,
feeding them with food begged in the city, burying their dead,
comforting them so lovingly that he appeared like an angel from heaven.
He saw in them not only Christ's brothers and sisters, but souls for
whom He had bled and died. He instructed the adults by means of
interpreters and pictures, and during the forty years of his heroic
apostolic labours he is said to have baptized over 300,000, including
infants. He fought courageously for enforcement of the law providing
for the Christian marriage of the slaves and forbidding the separation
of families. Every spring he conducted missions for the slaves in the
country, and in fall for the sailors and traders in the city, preaching
in the streets' hearing confessions for hours on end, so that he also
became the apostle of Cartagena itself. The plague struck the city in
1650, and Peter was one of its first victims. For four years he was
bedridden in his cell, unable to work, and almost forgotten. However,
when he announced his approaching end, crowds came to kiss his hands
and feet and to take away from his cell whatever they could as relics.
He was given a public burial, and the fame of his heroism, his
holiness, and his miracles soon spread throughout the world. Leo XIII
declared him the patron of all missionary work among the Negroes. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: Wisdom
9:13-18b; Psalm 90:3-6,
12-17; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33
Great crowds were
travelling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed
them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife
and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be
my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does
not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for
its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding
himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and
say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to
finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and
decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose
another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if
not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for
peace terms. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all
his possessions cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:25-33)
The experience of
the death of a loved one or an acquaintance is
profoundly moving. The deep loss it entails can lead to bitterness or
it can lead to a new and positive beginning. A new clarity as to the
purpose of life can come to a person who sees before him the body of
the one he has known and loved. If he is blessed with faith he knows
with conviction that all comes from God and that following death we
return to God to be judged on how we have used his gift of life to us.
He thinks of the life of the one lying before him and of the course
he
took and of the choices he made beginning perhaps in his youth. The
course of our life is constituted by our choices and those choices are
made each day. They are the bricks that are placed one after the other
as the building that is our life and our self is erected. What kind of
a building is it, now that the person’s life is over? Is it but dust
and ashes, or in some great and wonderful sense has that person taken
with him something that will endure for ever as pleasing in the sight
of God? It all depends on the choices that were made, and our
individual choices will be governed by our goals. If our goals are
centred on this life only, our choices will be shaped accordingly. But
if we have a vivid awareness that this life is short and that eternity
is long, and that eternity will involve either heaven or hell, our
choices will be shaped by that all-important consideration. Day by day
one great and unavoidable event is ahead of us, and that is our death
and the judgment of God. Following God’s judgment we shall be
unendingly happy or unendingly miserable. These great facts loom over
the whole of life and at the centre of it all is the person of Jesus.
He stands at the centre of our life day by day and he holds out to us
the key to happiness here on earth and forever hereafter. He has come
to offer us the happiness God intends for us. We do not see him
physically, but he abides in our midst in the life of the Church
inviting us to follow him and in doing this to gain our true happiness
here on earth and in heaven hereafter.
We ought think much
of the happiness Christ came to offer us. It is
inextricably linked with him. Our true happiness is to be found
in knowing and loving and following him. At the Last Supper our Lord
said that eternal life consists in knowing the Father and Jesus Christ
whom he sent. What, then, is the happiness he offers the one who knows
him, loves him, follows him, lives and finally dies in him? Firstly it
is the happiness of living constantly in the grace of God and with a
share in his divine life. Our Lord said to his disciples, my peace I
leave to you — not the peace the world gives but my peace I give you.
In all the joys and sorrows of life, the Christian knows he has the
greatest possession of all that no one can take from him and that is
God. It is above all this which our Lord brings us and with it the
happiness that possessing God confers. In sickness or in health, in
good times and in bad, in life and in death, living in union with Jesus
brings the happiness of having God and knowing that we belong to him.
But then, the one who lives in Jesus has the joy of knowing that
provided he perseveres in following our Lord as his disciple in the
life of the Church, heaven also awaits him. We ought often think of
heaven. It is the prize that can spur us on to follow Christ closely.
The thought of living forever with God in heaven can nourish a great
desire to bear the cross of Christ with him each day, to accept the
sufferings that are part and parcel of doing the will of God in our
everyday life, and to die with Christ daily. Our Lord tells us that if
we aspire to be his disciples and so enter into glory with him, we must
carry our cross and come after him. He goes on to say that we must sit
down and count the cost. “Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is
enough for its completion?” And again, “Or what king marching into
battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand
troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with
twenty thousand troops?” What is the cost? Our Lord is very clear: “In
the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.” (Luke
14:25-33)
Renouncing all our
possessions means
giving our whole heart to Christ. It means striving to love him with
all our strength and disentangling our heart from all that is not
connected with him. We love our work, we love our family, we love
the interests God may have given us, but only inasmuch as they are in
him. It is in him that our true happiness lies, and we shall only be
truly happy if everything that makes up our life is connected with him.
He is the love of the Christian and love for Christ is to exceed any
other love. Were any other love to claim our heart in place of Jesus
that possession, as we might call it, is to be renounced. Christ is the
path to our true happiness both here and hereafter. Let us then resolve
for love of Jesus to follow in his footsteps daily, taking up our cross
and accompanying him. If we live in him we shall die in him, and if we
die in him we shall reign forever in heaven with him.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.1720-1724
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Second reflection on the Gospel of
the twenty third Sunday of Ordinary Time C
Scripture today:
Wisdom 9:13-19; Psalm 89; Philemon 9-10.12-17;
Luke 14:25-33
The First
In the year 2001 there was a lengthy
feature article in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph on fathers of
families who were spending more time with their children. They were men of
various situations and professions, but they had come to realise that family
life and love, and their relationships with their wives and children were
not to be taken for granted, but were to be
worked
at. And so they found time to be with them, time to participate in what they
were doing. They loved their wives and children, they thought about it,
calculated, and decided to find time for what they knew to be important. If
a person goes through life seeking to gain some things, such as success in
career, and neglects other very important things, he has failed to think and
act prudently. He has not thought the matter through. He will pay for it
because actions have consequences. There was once a television documentary
on the life of the great Hollywood actor of the 1930s to the 1950s, Errol
Flynn. In the documentary, the ageing actress Olivia de Havilland made the
remark that Flynn failed to appreciate that actions have consequences. In
our Gospel today, our Lord’s parable speaks of the one who sits down to
calculate what he must do to build the tower. Our Lord’s parable is about
sitting down to calculate what must be done to be truly his disciple, which
entails placing him above all else in life. Jesus is not to be simply one
among many things that life includes. He is the centrepiece, the one we are
to seek in everything. Our Gospel today (Luke
14:25-33) reminds us that we must give careful thought to this,
and calculate accordingly. All else will find its due place once Jesus is
the centre of our lives and of our aspirations. He is our Way, our Truth,
and our Life. If God makes certain demands and our family, or our work
prospects, or our convenience, dictate other things, they must give way to
God and his demands. That is not lack of love, it is loving the right things
in the right way and in their right place.
We must put God before family, work,
nation, convenience, everything. The martyrs did this and we too must do it,
even if sometimes it means a living martyrdom. When Jesus promised the
Eucharist, the giving of his body and blood for food, it sounded like
madness to many and they left our Lord in numbers. Jesus turned to his
disciples and asked, “Do you also want to leave?” Peter answered, “Master,
to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” If we have faith
in our Lord, our answer will be the same. We accept his word no matter what
the cost, but only if he has first place in our hearts and in our everyday
life. This is the meaning of our Lord’s teaching today that no one can be
his disciple unless he gives up all his possessions. When a person of great
honour enters the room, many rise to offer him their place. They are ready
to give it up, even if in the event it is not necessary. All that we have
must give place to Jesus. He must be Lord, the Lord of lords in our life.
Our life and possessions must serve him, and not ourselves. Let our attitude
be, not that I have to do this, but that I want to do it for love of him.
When St Thomas More was awaiting execution for refusing to accept the King
of England as head of the Church instead of the Pope, his wife and family
were profoundly distressed with him, and could not see why he did not give
in to the King. After all, they said, it was just a matter of a few words.
They may have felt that he was not considering them, that he did not love
them enough. Our Lord says in the Gospel that if someone does not come to
him without hating parents, family and his own life, he cannot be his
disciple. Our Lord means that one must love him to the extent even on the
rare occasion of seeming to disregard those closest to one, or of seeming to
disregard possessions, or career prospects, or doing things that might seem
to show a lack of love for others. St Thomas More may have even seemed cruel
to his family in his steadfast following of what he knew to be right. This
was putting Jesus first.
Let us reflect on the kind of tower we should be building in life, the tower
of personal sanctity. Let us count the cost: it is a matter of putting Jesus
first, and of loving him with our whole heart, and living this out in the
everyday and hidden duties of life. All things will then find their true
meaning in him.
(E.J.Tyler)
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That joke, that witty remark held on the tip of your tongue; the
cheerful smile for those who annoy you; that silence when you're
unjustly accused; your friendly conversation with people whom you find
boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail
or another in the persons who live with you... this, with perseverance,
is indeed solid interior mortification.
(The Way,
no.173)
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What is required by the ninth commandment?
(You
shall not covet your neighbour’s wife)
The ninth commandment requires that one overcome carnal concupiscence
in thought and in desire. The struggle against such concupiscence
entails purifying the heart and practising the virtue of temperance.
(CCC 2514-2516, 2528-2530)
(Compendium
of the Catechism of
the Catholic Church, no.527)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 10) Saint Nicholas of
Tolentino Nicholas Gurrutti was born in the village of
Sant'Angelo in Pontano, Italy in 1245. His parents, middle-aged
and childless, made a pilgrimage to the 
shrine of Saint
Nicholas of Bari, their special patron, to ask his intercession on
their behalf. Shortly thereafter, a son was born to them whom
they named Nicholas out of gratitude. At an early age Nicholas was
greatly moved by the preaching of the Augustinian, Father Reginaldo do
Monterubbiano, prior of the monastery of Sant'Angelo, and requested
admission to the community. He was accepted by the friars and made his
novitiate in 1261. Nicholas directed his efforts to being a good
religious and priest, and soon became renowned for his charity toward
his confreres and all God's people. His religious formation was
greatly influenced by the spirituality of the hermits of Brettino, one
of the congregations which came to form part of the "Grand Union" of
Augustinians in 1256. whose communities were located in the region of
the March where Nicholas was born and raised. Characteristic of these
early hermits of Brettino was a great emphasis on poverty, rigorous
practices of fasting and abstinence and long periods of the day devoted
to communal and private prayer. As Nicholas entered the Order at
its inception he learned to combine the ascetical practices of the
Brettini with the apostolic thrust which the Church now invited the
Augustinians to practice. At times, Nicholas devoted himself to
prayer and works of penance with such intensity that it was necessary
for his superiors to impose limitations on him. At one point he
was so weakened though fasting that he was encouraged in a vision of
Mary and the child Jesus to eat a piece of bread signed with the cross
and soaked in water to regain his strength. Thereafter he
followed this practice in ministering to the sick himself. In his
honor the custom of blessing and distributing the "Bread of Saint
Nicholas" in continued by the Augustinians in many places today.
Nicholas was ordained to the priesthood in 1271. He lived in
several difference monasteries of the Augustinian Order, engaged
principally in the ministry of preaching. In 1275 he was
sent to Tolentino and remained there for the rest of his
life. Nicholas worked to counteract the decline of morality
and religion which came with the development of city life in the late
thirteenth century. He ministered to the sick and the poor, and
actively sought out those who had become estranged from the
Church. A fellow religious describes Nicholas' ministry in
these words: "He was a joy to those who were sad, a consolation to the
suffering, peace to those at variance, refreshment to those who toiled,
support for the poor, and a healing balm for prisoners."
Nicholas' reputation as a saintly man and a worker of miracles led many
people to the monastery of Tolentino. When in 1884 Nicholas was
proclaimed "Patron Saint of the Souls in Purgatory" by Pope Leo XIII,
confirmation was given to a long-standing aspect of devotion toward
this friar which is traced to an event in his own life. On a
certain Saturday night as he lay in bed, Nicholas heard Fra Pellegrino
of Osimo, a deceased friar who Nicholas had known. Fra Pellegrino
revealed that he was in purgatory and he begged Nicholas to offer Mass
for him and for the other suffering souls so that they might be set
free. For the next seven days, Nicholas did so and was rewarded
with a second vision in which the deceased confrere expressed his
gratitude and assurance that a great number of people were now enjoying
the presence of God through Nicholas' prayers. As this event
became known, many people approached Nicholas, asking his intercession
on behalf of their own deceased relatives and friends. Nicholas died in
Tolentino on September 10th, 1305. He was declared a saint in
1446 - the first member of the Augustinian Order to be canonized.
Saint Nicholas' body is venerated in the basilica in Tolentino which
bears his name. His feast is celebrated by the Augustinian family
on this day each September. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Colossians
1:24–2:3; Psalm 62:6-7,
9; Luke 6:6-11
On a certain
sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught, and there was a man
there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees
watched him closely to see if he would cure on the sabbath so that they
might discover a reason to accuse him. But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the withered hand, “Come up and stand before
us.” And he rose and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you,
is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save
life rather than to destroy it?” Looking around at them all, he then
said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so and his hand was
restored. But they became enraged and discussed together what they
might do to Jesus. (Luke 6:6-11)
There are many
things that are a cause of wonder in our world. For instance,
repeatedly we can find ourselves in situations that almost take our
breath away for their beauty. It could be some spectacular natural
scenery, or the sight of the universe with its countless galaxies, or
the intriguing and beautiful animal and insect kingdom. Another feature
of life and reality that can bring a sense of wonder is simply the
discovery of the truth about something. Suddenly the answer to a
problem dawns. The mystery of life envelopes a person at
the death of an acquaintance or loved one or perhaps at the birth of a
child, and after a period of profound meditative thought a
new and
powerful realization of the meaning of life is attained. As is beauty,
so too is the truth a cause of wonder. Another mystery which
confronts us right and left during life is the fact of good and evil.
Why is it that there is not simply moral good everywhere? There is a
profound cleavage between good and evil present in man and among men
and therefore throughout the world. There is the moral good and there
is the bad. There is holiness and there is sin. There is Christ and
there is that which deliberately refuses him. There is, ultimately, God
and that which is against God. Our Gospel passage today gives us one of
countless instances of these two great opposites present throughout the
sacred Scriptures. Our Gospel scene places us in the synagogue where
Jesus is teaching, and there was a man there “whose right hand was
withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely to see if
he would cure on the sabbath so that they might discover a reason to
accuse him.” (Luke
6:6-11) Here
we have a person of striking supernatural power and goodness speaking
constantly of God, and the leaders of this religious society wished to
trap and overcome him. Ultimately they desired that he be silenced and,
if necessary, destroyed. Christ works his miracle before their very
eyes, and this simply enrages them. The good is hated.
The hard fact is that in the world where there is good there is also hatred
and dislike of the good. Where there is wheat growing, there are also the
tares - to draw on one of Christ’s parables. The hatred of the scribes and
Pharisees who watched our Lord and who reacted hostilely to his healing of
the man with the withered hand reached its conclusion in the crucifixion of
Jesus. Christ on the cross with the taunting leaders below him is the
ultimate image of the opposition of these two forces, the good and the
bad. The point in all of this is that we must make our choice. We cannot
drift through life because if we do
we shall find ourselves to a greater of lesser extent tolerating and
collaborating consciously or unconsciously with the bad against the
good. We shall also find ourselves being enticed into temptation in our
own private lives. We must make our choice and it has to be a matter of
repeatedly choosing the good as embodied in the person of Christ and
repeatedly renouncing the bad as embodied in what the Church has called
the world, the flesh and the devil. It has to involve a firm and
deliberate choice. This choice is made especially when the invitation
from Christ is heard in faith to join with him and then made formally
at our baptism when we are placed in him by grace. At our baptism we
are made members of him and we begin to share his life. We profess our
faith in him and we renounce the devil and all his temptations to
live in his company, the seductions of the world and the inclinations
of our fallen nature. The scribes and Pharisees were in the closest
proximity to Christ and in him to God. They observed One who was in
fact Yahweh God acting among them, God the Son become man. They
observed his powerful works of mercy. Yet they hated him. We must take
our stand with Christ and, choosing to love him, we must bear witness
to this love every day.
Every day ought be
lived in such a way that, were it to prove suddenly to be our last, we
would be ready. That is to say, every day ought be lived such that
Christ is our choice and all that is opposed to him in whatever sense
or in any detail, is rejected by us. Sin and evil are to be defined and
described in reference to Christ and his teaching. We choose Christ and
renounce all that is not in accord with his mind. Let this mind be in
you that was in Christ Jesus, St Paul writes. Let us then belong to
him, living in the world while belonging totally to him.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Don't say: 'That person gets on my nerves.' Think: 'That person
sanctifies me.'
(The Way,
no.174)
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What is forbidden by the ninth commandment?
The ninth commandment forbids cultivating thoughts and desires
connected to actions forbidden by the sixth commandment. (CCC
2517-2519, 2531-2532)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.528)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Tuesday of the twenty third week of Ordinary Time II
(September 11) Saint Adelphus 670 Benedictine abbot. He was the grandson of St. Romaricus and served as his successor as abbot of Remiremont. Adelphus died at Luxeuil, France. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture
today: Colossians
2:6-15; Psalm 145:1b-2,
8-11; Luke 6:12-19
Jesus departed to
the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in
prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and
from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles: Simon, whom he
named Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew,
Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called a
Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a
traitor. And he came down with them and stood on a stretch of level
ground. A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people
from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon
came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and even those who
were tormented by unclean spirits were cured. Everyone in the crowd
sought to touch him because power came forth from him and healed them
all. (Luke
6:12-19)
In our Gospel today
we see our Lord taking concrete steps to lay the
foundations for his Kingdom. He is appointing the Twelve, his
fundamental and most important officers. When we think of the Twelve,
we think of the Kingdom, which is to say God’s long-predicted rule or
lordship. Jesus Christ was embarking on an immense undertaking, far
more ambitious (we might say) than that of any other rule in the
history of the world. He was bringing God to the earth in the manner
long foretold and intended by God. God would reign in the hearts of
those who chose to receive him in and from his Messiah. It was a
kingdom present here on earth, but enduring forever in eternity.
His
kingdom would be victorious over all others, and its beginning, its
locale, and its indispensable instrument was the Church which Christ
would found on the visible rock which was Simon Peter as the head of
the Twelve. Its purpose was to save mankind from sin and to bring all
who accepted Christ to holiness in him. What this kingdom offers is
transformation in Christ, the opportunity to become a new creature, new
with a share in his divine life. We who are baptized into his Church
are members of this kingdom, a kingdom destined for glory. It is the
kingdom of God, the kingdom in which God is Lord and in which all the
blessings of heaven are found in Jesus. To possess Jesus, to belong to
him, to live in him, to know and love him, to be baptized into him, to
receive him in the Sacraments of the Church he founded, to live as
members of his Church in the state of grace, all this is what plants us
in the kingdom of God. Of course, all this heavenly treasure is
entrusted and administered by vessels of clay, the Twelve whom Christ
appoints in our Gospel passage today, and we are starkly reminded of
this in the mention of Judas who would betray him. But these vessels of
clay administer and bring to the world the pearl of great price which
is the person of Christ and the grace of being in him.
Christ’s
appointment of the Twelve reminds us not only of the Kingdom
of God but of the Church which Christ founded on the Twelve. The Church
is the bearer, the locale and the instrument of the Kingdom. The Church
is Christ’s body. He is her head. The Church is nothing without him.
The Church’s dogmatic teaching is Christ’s teaching and her sacraments
are Christ’s actions. He is the living protagonist of the Church and he
enlivens and sustains the Church through the action and grace of the
Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of God. The
purpose of being a member of the Church is to come into profound
contact with Christ and by the grace of God to become like unto Christ
in our mind, heart and soul. This grace that redeems and sanctifies the
one who receives it is symbolized in our Gospel today by the miracles
Jesus worked. “A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the
people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and
Sidon came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and even
those who were tormented by unclean spirits were cured. Everyone in the
crowd sought to touch him because power came forth from him and healed
them all”
(Luke
6:12-19). St
John in his Gospel called Christ’s
miracles “signs” - they were “signs” of the action of grace which was
poured out on the Church in the sending of the Holy Spirit, who remains
with the Church to sanctify and evangelize. The Church’s mission,
received from Christ, is to make mankind holy and to make saints of
each of us. We ought love the Church as our mother, just as Christ
loved the Church as his bride. He gave himself up for her and we her
children have benefited from the merits of Christ that have come to us
by means of her. To bring the kingdom of God - which is to say, God’s
lordship - to the men and women of our day means nothing other than
bringing Christ to them, and Christ is found and offered in the Church.
Let us contemplate
our Lord in our Gospel scene today laying the
foundations of his Church and of the Kingdom of God which the Church
would bring to men. He appoints the Twelve, and on this foundation he
builds his Church. He himself abides with the Church till the end of
the world when he will come again. Our calling as members of the Church
is to be transformed into his likeness in mind and heart. Let us work
on this greatest of projects every day of our lives.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Don't say: 'That person gets on my nerves.' Think: 'That person
sanctifies me.'
(The Way,
no.174)
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How does one
reach purity of heart?
In the battle against disordered desires the baptised person is able,
by the grace of God, to achieve purity of heart through the virtue and
gift of chastity, through purity of intention, purity of vision (both
exterior and interior), discipline of the imagination and of feelings
and by prayer. (CCC 2520)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.529)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 12) St. Apollinaris Claudius A Christian apologist, Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia in the second century. He became famous for his polemical treatises against the heretics of his day, whose errors he showed to be entirely borrowed from the pagans. He wrote two books against the Jews, five against the pagans, and two on "Truth." In 177 he published an eloquent "Apologia" for the Christians, addressed to Marcus Aurelius, and appealing to the Emperor's own experience with the "Thundering Legion", whose prayers won him the victory over the Quadi. The exact date of his death is not known, but it was probably while Marcus Aurelius was still Emperor. None of his writings are extant. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: Colossians
3:1-11; Psalm 145:2-3, 10-11,
12-13ab; Luke 6:20-26
Raising his eyes
toward his disciples Jesus said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for the
Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you
will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will
laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and
insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of
Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be
great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same
way. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your
consolation. But woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when
all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets
in this way.” (Luke 6:20-26)
As every parent
gazes on his infant child he hopes that the child before him will be
blessed during life. Good fortune and happiness is what man longs for
and the only question is, wherein does this lie? A leading member of
the Mafia will hope and expect that the child before him will grow to
be a competent Mafia leader and find in the organization all the good
things that life has to offer him. A father builds up a
most impressive business
that spans various localities and even countries and hopes that his son
will find his life work in carrying on and extending the family
business. The question facing every person is, in what will my life be
blessed and fortunate?
Wherein is true happiness to be found? It is
natural to think of wealth and the acquisition of numerous possessions,
freedom from sorrow and stress, the admiration and respect of society,
achievements to one’s credit, health and in general the satisfaction of
one’s legitimate desires and needs. But our Lord puts human happiness
in starkly opposite terms. Our happiness does not lie simply in the
things of this world. Blessed therefore, he says, are those who are
poor, hungry, and weeping. Blessed are those who are unpopular and
indeed hated on account of him. Rejoice! Why? Because
a great reward is being kept for you in heaven (Luke 6:20-26). I suppose we could
vaguely liken it to the present sufferings of a person who has been
informed that in a little while an immense treasure will most certainly
be his. He has won the jackpot. The difference is that the Christian
who throws in his entire lot with Christ enjoys the jackpot already,
and that “jackpot” is the person of Christ. He has the pearl of great
price, the treasure hidden in the field, and that present treasure is
the living unseen Jesus. He possesses Jesus truly but in faith, whereas
in heaven he will possess him by sight. There in heaven his reward will
be great beyond imagining because he chose an eternal treasure.
Our Lord is saying
that the happiness of man lies in God and in doing his will. Where is
God, and how do we know his will? Speaking very concretely and in a way
that enables us to point in a very precise direction, God is there in
the person of Jesus. That is to say, God is Jesus. The fullness of the
godhead is there in him whom you see before you, Jesus. He is that
person of whom the Church speaks in her teaching and proclamation, and
of whom the Scriptures speak, especially the Gospels. God’s will is
revealed in the words and teaching and example of Jesus because he is
God. He who sees me sees the Father, Jesus said. God is Jesus just as
truly as God is the Father and God is the Holy Spirit. The one only God
is each of the three divine and distinct persons, and each is the one
only God. In proclaiming the nature of true human happiness Jesus our
Lord is speaking from the depths of his own divine happiness. His
happiness is found in the Father and not in the things of this world.
This world is simply a window and means to God and all happiness coming
from this world takes us, or should take us to the happiness we are
called to enjoy in God. Christ’s constant and profound happiness and
joy had God his Father as its source, and this is his message about
human happiness. He is inviting us to find our happiness in the same
source as he. The beatitudes of our Gospel today not only point to God
as the source of man’s happiness, but they point to the happiness
continually experienced by Jesus and they invite us to share in his
happiness by seeking what he sought. God his Father was his life, and
that was the source of his happiness. He invites us to enter into union
with him and so share in his happiness. The beatitudes are Christ’s
description of man’s true happiness and they are a revelation of his
own inner life.
Let us not misjudge
human happiness, for many do. They spend their lives seeking it where
it will not be found. Christ and his way are the path to happiness and
the beatitudes of our Gospel today are the Lord’s description of this
way. Let us embark on this way every day. It will take us to the
happiness for which our heart yearns.
(E.J.Tyler)
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No ideal becomes a reality without sacrifice. Deny yourself. It's
so beautiful to be a victim !
(The Way,
no.175)
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What are the
other requirements for purity?
Purity
requires modesty which, while protecting the intimate center of the
person, expresses the sensitivity of chastity. It guides how one looks
at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of
persons and their communion. Purity frees one from wide-spread
eroticism and avoids those things which foster morbid curiosity. Purity
also requires a purification of the social climate by means of a
constant struggle against moral permissiveness which is founded on an
erroneous conception of human freedom. (CCC 2521-2527, 2533)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.530)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thursday of the twenty third week of Ordinary Time II
(September 13) Saint John
Chrysostom, bishop and doctor of the Church (died 407)
The ambiguity and
intrigue surrounding John, the great preacher (his name means
"golden-mouthed") from Antioch, are characteristic of the life of any
great man in a capital city. Brought to Constantinople after a dozen
years of priestly service in Syria, John found himself the reluctant
victim of an imperial ruse to make him bishop in the greatest city of
the empire. Ascetic, unimposing but dignified, and troubled by stomach
ailments from his desert days as a monk, John began his episcopate
under the cloud of imperial politics. If his body was weak, his tongue
was powerful. The content of his sermons, his exegesis of Scripture,
were never without a point. Sometimes the point stung the high and
mighty. Some sermons lasted up to two hours. His life-style at the
imperial court was not appreciated by some courtiers. He offered a
modest table to episcopal sycophants hanging around for imperial and
ecclesiastical favours. John deplored the court protocol that accorded
him precedence before the highest state officials. He would not be a
kept man. His zeal led him to decisive action. Bishops who bribed their
way into their office were deposed. Many of his sermons called for
concrete steps to share wealth with the poor. The rich did not
appreciate hearing from John that private property existed because of
Adam's fall from grace any more than married men liked to hear that
they were bound to marital fidelity just as much as their wives. When
it came to justice and charity, John acknowledged no double standards.
Aloof, energetic, outspoken, especially when he became excited in the
pulpit, John was a sure target for criticism and personal trouble. He
was accused of gorging himself secretly on rich wines and fine foods.
His faithfulness as spiritual director to the rich widow, Olympia,
provoked much gossip attempting to prove him a hypocrite where wealth
and chastity were concerned. His action taken against unworthy bishops
in Asia Minor was viewed by other ecclesiastics as a greedy,
uncanonical extension of his authority. Two prominent personages who
personally undertook to discredit John were Theophilus, Archbishop of
Alexandria, and Empress Eudoxia. Theophilus feared the growth in
importance of the Bishop of Constantinople and took occasion to charge
John with fostering heresy. Theophilus and other angered bishops were
supported by Eudoxia. The empress resented his sermons contrasting
gospel values with the excesses of imperial court life. Whether
intended or not, sermons mentioning the lurid Jezebel and impious
Herodias were associated with the empress, who finally did manage to
have John exiled. He died in exile in 407.
(Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Colossians
3:12-17; Psalm
150:1b-6; Luke 6:27-38
Jesus said to his
disciples: “To you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those
who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat
you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as
well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even
your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who
takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would
have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is
that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good
to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners
do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment,
what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back
the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and
lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you
will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the
ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as also your Father is
merciful. “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and
you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and
gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken
down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure
with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” (Luke
6:27-38)
It is the most
natural thing in the world to feel slighted and wounded at the hurts
that come from this or that inconsiderate or thoughtless person. The
memory of some hurts can remain for the whole of life, and together
with those hurts resentment, anger and hate. I have heard of the sad
tragedy
of persons reaching old age and then declining into severe
dementia. What makes this condition particularly sad in some cases is
that the person can then be locked in with numerous unresolved and
unforgiven memories that are the
only images that fill
their failing minds. They progressively lose contact with the present
and all they have are various debilitating memories of the past. What a
pity that by then love has not overcome hate in those memories,
for
those memories become e world of constant suffering to them! Even
ordinary reflection and common sense indicates that anger towards one’s
enemies, a desire of revenge towards those who inflict hurt, will not
bring happiness. We are made to love, and it is love that brings
happiness. But there is so much in life that makes it difficult to love
and even, from a natural point of view, almost impossible. Yet our
Lord’s words in today’s Gospel are very explicit. We are to love those
who injure us (i.e., our enemies) and we are to do good to them. We are
not to judge nor condemn. We are to forgive and we are to be merciful
and forgiving (Luke 6:27-38). As our Lord says
elsewhere, we are to do all this without end - not just seven times a
day but “seventy seven times”. In other words, love is to fill our
mind, our heart and our whole life. What we are speaking of here is a
transformation root and branch of the mind and heart of the human
person so that love flourishes in his entire being. Now the question
is, how is this ever to happen?
At his baptism the
Christian is placed in the person of Christ. Christ envelopes him and
Christ embeds the Spirit of God into the depths of his soul. A new life
begins there, and that life is a share in the life of Christ. God’s
plan is to gradually transform us into the likeness of Christ by the
power of the Holy Spirit. That wondrous transformation will involve
replacing indifference, resentment and hatred with love. Transformation
into Christ is the goal of God’s work in our souls, and it is the
overriding project of life. It is the one thing necessary. When the
moment comes for us to pass from this world to the next, the great work
of life will have to have been completed. That work is, by the powerful
grace of Christ, to have been made like him in our mind, heart and
soul. St Paul writes in one of his Letters, let this mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus. As our body lies in its coffin, the question
will be, have we been thus transformed? The one and only chance we
shall ever have to attain this for all eternity will have gone. Will my
transformation into the likeness of Christ and into a deep union with
his living person have been attained? If not, I go into eternity
without him, and indeed separated from him. This transformation
intended by God is to be utterly genuine and not just imputed to me.
God will not just accept me in view of the merits of his Son, in view
of the atonement he made on my behalf. No, God wishes to see me
actually good and holy in my inmost being. He intends me by the power
of his grace to have driven out sin from my heart and to have become
like unto his Son. He wants to see in me another Christ such that I am
genuinely loving those who injure me, forgiving those who have caused
me harm, giving as Christ would give. This involves constant
renunciation for love for Jesus, and constantly cooperating with his
grace to make it possible. This grace comes through the Sacraments of
the Church, through daily prayer, and through listening to and reading
and then applying the word of God to my daily life.
Let us take our
Lord’s words in today’s Gospel to heart and understand clearly that
they require a new mind and a new heart. They require and they nourish
holiness, a holiness that is genuine and of the heart. This
transformation into the person of Christ is only possible through daily
renunciation and a very deliberate following of Christ in my everyday
life, and taking all means possible to receive regularly the
all-powerful grace of Christ. Christ in me, my hope of glory!
(E.J.Tyler)
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How often you resolve to serve God in
something, and you have to content yourself — you are so weak — with
offering him the frustrated feeling of having failed to keep such a
simple resolution !
(The Way,
no.176)
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What is required and what is forbidden
by the tenth commandment?
This commandment, which completes the preceding commandment, requires
an interior attitude of respect for the property of others and forbids
greed, unbridled covetousness for the goods of others, and envy which
is the sadness one experiences at the sight of another’s goods and the
immoderate desire to acquire them for oneself. (CCC 2534-2540,
2551-2554)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.531
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
(Friday of the twenty third week of Ordinary Time II)
(September
14) On the Feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross (or Triumph of the Cross) we honour the
Holy
Cross by which Christ redeemed the world. The public veneration of the
Cross of Christ originated in the fourth century, according to early
accounts, beginning with the miraculous discovery of the cross on
September 14, 326, by Saint Helena, mother of Constantine, while she
was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem -- the same day that two churches
built at the site of Calvary by Constantine were dedicated. The
observance of the Feast of the Exaltation (probably from a Greek word
meaning "bringing to light") of the Cross has been celebrated by
Christians on September 14 ever since. In the Western Church, the feast
came into prominence in the seventh century, apparently inspired by the
recovery of a portion of the Cross by the Roman emperor Heraclius
in 629. This portion was said to have been taken from Jerusalem by the
Persians,
The Cross represents the One Sacrifice by which Jesus, obedient even
unto death, accomplished our salvation. The cross is a symbolic summary
of the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ -- all in one
image. The Cross -- because of what it represents -- is the most potent
and universal symbol of the Christian faith. It has inspired both
liturgical and private devotions: for example, the Sign of the Cross,
which is an invocation of the Holy Trinity; the "little" Sign of the
Cross on head, lips and heart at the reading of the Gospel; praying the
Stations (or Way) of the Cross; and the Veneration of the Cross by the
faithful on Good Friday by kissing the feet of the image of Our Savior
crucified. Placing a crucifix (the cross with an image of Christ's body
upon it) in churches and homes, in classrooms of Catholic schools and
in other Catholic institutions, or wearing this image on our persons,
is a constant reminder -- and witness -- of Christ's ultimate triumph,
His victory over sin and death through His suffering and dying on the
Cross. We remember Our Lord's words, "He who does not take up his cross
and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it,
and he who loses his life for my sake shall find it." (Mt 10:38,39).
Meditating on these words we unite ourselves -- our souls and bodies --
with His obedience and His sacrifice; and we rejoice in this
inestimable gift through which we have the hope of salvation and the
glory. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Numbers
21:4b-9; Psalm 78:1bc-2, 34-38;
Philippians 2:6-11;
John 3:13-17
Jesus said to
Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come
down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that
everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in
him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send
his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might
be saved through him. (John 3:13-17)
One of the greatest
themes in world literature, in poetry, in drama, in epics, in fiction
of all kinds, and in historical narrative, is the curse of suffering
and death. Particularly powerful is the story of suffering that does
not appear to be just, and death at the end of suffering that has no
apparent purpose. One could make a case for asserting that much of the
religious life of man is a response to the mystery of suffering and
evil, and the student of religion could well approach his researches
with the question of how the
religion he is studying
deals with suffering and death. What meaning does this or that religion
discover or attribute to suffering and evil? To take an obvious
instance, Buddha several centuries before Christ set out to find the
answer to the pall of suffering that afflicts man, and believed that he
had found the answer - and the Christian would state that Buddha found
some elements of the answer. Into this world-wide and enduring
dilemma the living God has intervened with his revelation.
Ultimately evil and suffering have their origin in the sin of man, and
God has sent his remedy for sin. That remedy is to be found in the
person of Christ who not only redeems man from sin but in the gift of
his Holy Spirit sanctifies him. This grand remedy is offered to all,
and it is the responsibility of all Christ’s faithful to bring Christ
to others for in him is found every heavenly blessing. But now, there
is a remarkable feature of this work of man’s redemption. It is that
obedience in the midst of incalculable suffering culminating in death
is the divinely chosen means of redemption and sanctification. It is
not just that Christ by his obedience saved us from our disobedience.
He saved us by the Cross. That is to say, he saved us not just by his
obedience but by his obedience unto death. His passion and death was
the distinguishing and irreplaceable context whereby his obedience was
tested and manifested. Man’s disobedience was atoned by Christ’s
obedient embrace of his suffering and death on the Cross.
St Paul speaks of
the foolishness of the Cross. Christ chose, in obedience to his
heavenly Father, the path of suffering, that suffering that was part
and parcel of his witness to the truth unto death. It is hard to think
of anything its like in the history of religions. Mahomet did not
embrace obedient suffering as such in order to atone for mankind’s sin.
Nor did Buddha. The embrace of the Cross is distinctive of Christianity
and the connection between the path of the Cross and redemption is of
itself a mystery. Furthermore, Christ made it plain that if anyone
wishes to be his disciple that person must deny himself, take up his
cross - note the use of the term ‘the cross’ - every day, and follow in
his footsteps. The Christian embraces the cross, he chooses to take it
up and he does so out of love for Jesus and a desire to be with him and
to walk with him during the course of life. His path is that of the
acceptance of whatever suffering is entailed in doing God’s will.
Indeed, it is more than the mere acceptance of it. The one who loves
Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit also actively embraces the
cross. We see this exemplified countless times in the history of
Christian holiness and in the saints of the Church. They loved the
Cross because they loved Christ. They chose the path of difficulty and
mortification out of love for Christ who embraced his passion and death
for their sake. For the man in the street, as we might call him, this
is foolishness. It is a foolishness even to many a Christian - to those
Christians who have not yet embarked on a generous following of Christ.
Such persons are still on the milk and have not yet passed on to the
meat of the Christian religion. All this is to say that the Christian
religion exalts the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and holds it up for
our veneration and imitation. (John 3:13-17)
The path to
holiness in Christ lies in embracing the cross of Christ and in
exalting it in our own life. St Paul writes, “Let this mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus”, and as he writes again, “with Christ I am
nailed to the Cross.” This is the true answer to the problem of
suffering in the life of each person and in the world. We must approach
it with the mind of Christ and in union with him. If we suffer with
Christ we are on the path to dying with him and if we die with him we
shall rise with him, and if we rise with him we shall reign with him.
Let us pray for the signal grace to look on obedient suffering as
Christ did, and to live this out in our daily life.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Don't waste the opportunity of yielding your
own judgment. It's hard..., but how pleasing it is in the eyes of God!
(The Way,
no.177)
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What does Jesus call for in poverty of
spirit?
Jesus calls his disciples to prefer him to everything and everyone.
Detachment from riches – in the spirit of evangelical poverty – and
self-abandonment to divine providence free us from anxiety about the
future and prepare us for the blessedness of the “poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mathew 5:3). (CCC 2544-2547, 2556)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.532)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows
Saturday of the twenty third week of Ordinary Time II
(September
15) Our
Lady of Sorrows (Saints)
For a while there were two feasts in honour of the Sorrowful Mother:
one going back to the 15th century, the other to the 17th century. For
a while both were celebrated by the universal Church: one on the Friday
before Palm Sunday, the other in September. The principal biblical
references to Mary's sorrows are in Luke 2:35 and John 19:26-27. The
Lucan passage is Simeon's prediction about a sword piercing Mary's
soul; the Johannine passage relates Jesus' words to Mary and to the
beloved disciple. Many early Church writers interpret the sword as
Mary's sorrows, especially as she saw Jesus die on the cross. Thus, the
two passages are brought together as prediction and fulfilment. St.
Ambrose in particular sees Mary as a sorrowful yet powerful figure at
the cross. Mary stood fearlessly at the cross while others fled. Mary
looked on her Son's wounds with pity, but saw in them the salvation of
the world. As Jesus hung on the cross, Mary did not fear to be killed
but offered herself to her persecutors.
John's account of Jesus' death is
highly symbolic. When Jesus gives the beloved disciple to Mary, we are
invited to appreciate Mary's role in the Church: She symbolizes the
Church; the beloved disciple represents all believers. As Mary mothered
Jesus, she is now mother to all his followers. Furthermore, as Jesus
died, he handed over his Spirit. Mary and the Spirit cooperate in
begetting new children of God—almost an echo of Luke's account of
Jesus' conception. Christians can trust that they will continue to
experience the caring presence of Mary and Jesus' Spirit throughout
their lives and throughout history.
Scripture today:
1 Timothy
1:15-17; Psalm 113:1b-2-7; John 19:25-27 or Luke 2:33-35
Standing by the
cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife
of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the
disciple there whom he loved he said to his mother, “Woman, behold,
your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And
from that hour the disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27)
Jesus’ father and
mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them
and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is destined for the
fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be
contradicted and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts
of many hearts may be revealed.” (Luke 2:33-35)
Christ the Son of
God made man was intensely human. His was a perfect and full humanity,
indeed the fullest and most perfect of any man in history. His feelings
were profound and the affront and sufferings of his Passion and
crucifixion were incalculable. That God could take on a human nature
and suffer as he did is an extraordinary surprise to man and a
manifestation of his power. His embrace of weakness and death is an act
of his divine might. But now, consider one aspect of the lengths to
which he was reduced during his passion and
death. He was rendered prostrate on the cross in the presence of his
blessed mother. In his weakness he was helped by her presence and
support. His divine Father was his stay, but his very human mother was
also his great and strong support. She was there watching on as her Son
and her God slowly drowned in a sea of immeasurable suffering. She
watched and drowned with him, supporting him in his work of suffering.
She knew that he was redeeming the world and fulfilling his mission,
and she was united with him in his determination to accomplish the
work. As he was eager out of love, so was she. He saw her before him;
he knew she was there; he was fully aware that she understood why this
was happening and why he had chosen this path. We remember the
martyrdom of the seven brothers in 2 Maccabees 7, and especially the
support of their mother urging them on to be faithful in their witness
to God. How much more did the all-holy Mary silently support and
encourage her dying Son in his work of making all things new at last!
Mary suffered with Jesus as no one else did or could. She carried the
cross with him in spirit and virtually, we could say, died in grief
with him - but in all she was silent and strong like her Son. In faith
she
understood and she supported him to the last and just as he would not
have had it different, nor would she. Her Son was redeeming the entire
world, including herself.
On this day when we
think of the Sorrows of Mary the mother of Jesus we think of her
incomparable union with her Son in his sorrows. This is surely the
meaning of the Sorrows of Mary. We think of her at the foot of the
Cross watching her Son die a horrible death. He the all-holy One of
God, he the Son of the Father, he through whom all things were made was
bearing the sins of the entire world and expiating for them all. There
was not, nor could there ever be, anything like it in the history of
the world. It was the greatest work in the universe and in all history
and it changed the prospects of mankind and the world. The Cross was
being exalted and pinned to it as to the throne of all time was the Son
of God consumed in a fire of suffering that sent its divine holocaust
to the Father on high. Now, Mary was part of the holocaust, entirely
united in mind, heart and soul to her Son. She was the first and
greatest Christian who had followed him as he carried the Cross. She
united herself totally to his sacrifice with all the consuming
suffering that made up her offering. If, as St Paul says, we are to die
with him so as to rise with him, and if this pattern is to be lived
every day of our lives, then Mary more than anyone died with Christ in
spirit at Calvary and rose with him in spirit at his resurrection. In
her the Church was present and represented, and what she did then we
all can do in our modest way every time we participate in holy Mass.
Mass is the mystery of Calvary being made present, and with Christ at
Mass Mary his mother is of course present too for she more than anyone
else is in him. With him she renews the offering of all her sorrows,
and as the mother and the model of the Church she invites us to unite
ourselves to her so that we might be more united with her Son. How much
closer was the beloved disciple John to Jesus on the Cross for being
next to his sorrowing mother! So too, let us be close to Mary all
through life especially every time we participate in the sacrifice of
the Mass. (John 19:25-27)
Mary at the foot of
the Cross was given by Christ to the beloved disciple. The beloved
disciple was given by Christ to her. Let us then accept her as our
mother and our model. She will keep us close to Jesus our Saviour and
will unite us to his offering of himself to the Father. She will help
us follow in his footsteps and by her prayers and help we shall learn
to live and die with him, and so rise and reign with him.
(E.J.Tyler)
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When you see a poor wooden Cross, alone,
uncared-for, and of no value... and without its Crucified, don't forget
that that Cross is your Cross: the Cross of each day, the hidden Cross,
without splendour or consolation..., the Cross which is awaiting the
Crucified it lacks: and that Crucified must be you.
(The Way,
no.178)
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What is
the greatest human desire?
The greatest desire of the human person is to see God. “I want to see
God” is the cry of our whole being. We realize our true and full
happiness in the vision and beatitude of the One who created us out of
love and draws us to himself with infinite love. (CCC 2548-2550,
2557)
“Whoever sees God has obtained all the goods of which he can
conceive.” (St Gregory of Nyssa)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.533)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
Give peace, Lord,
to those who wait for you
and your prophets will proclaim you as you
deserve.
Hear
the prayers of your servant and of your people Israel. (Sirach 36:18)
Almighty God, our
creator and guide, may we serve you with all our heart
and know your forgiveness in our lives.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September 16)
Saint Cornelius, pope and martyr, and Saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr
Saint Cornelius
was elected pope in 251 during the
persecutions of the Emperor Decius. His first challenge, besides the
ever present threat of the Roman authorities, was to bring an end to
the schism brought on by his rival, the first anti-pope
Novatian. He convened a synod of bishops to confirm him as the rightful
successor of Peter. The great controversy that arose as a result of the
Decian persecution was whether or not the Church could pardon and receive
back into the Church those who had apostacized in the face of
martyrdom. Against both the bishops who argued that the Church could
not welcome back apostates and those who argued that they should be
welcomed back but did not demand a heavy penance of the penitent,
Cornelius decreed that they must be welcomed back and insisted that
they perform an adequate penance. In 253 Cornelius was exiled by the
emperor Gallus and died of the hardships he endured in exile. He
is venerated as a martyr.
(Saints)
Saint Cyprian of
Carthage is second in importance
only to the great Saint Augustine as a figure and Father of the African
church. He was a close friend of Pope Cornelius and supported him both
against the anti-pope Novatian, and in his views concerning the
re-admittance of apostates into the Church. Saint Cyprian was born to
wealthy pagans about the year 190 and educated in the classics and
rhetoric. He converted at the age of 56, was ordained a priest a year
later and a bishop two years after that. His writings are of great
importance, especially his treatise on The Unity of the Catholic Church
in which he argues that unity is grounded in the authority of the
bishop, and among the bishops, in the primacy of the See of Rome.
During the Decian persecutions Cyprian considered it wiser to go into
hiding and guide his flock covertly rather than seek the glorious crown
of martyrdom, a decision that his enemies attacked him for. On
September 14, 258, however, he was martyred during the persecutions of
the emperor Valerian. In, "The Unity of the Catholic Church," St.
Cyprian writes, "You cannot have God for your Father if youdo not have
the Church for your mother.... God is one and Christ is one, and his
Church is one; one is the faith, and one is the people cemented
together by harmony into the strong unity of a body.... If we are the
heirs of Christ, let us abide in the peace of Christ; if we are the
sons of God, let us be lovers of peace." (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture: Exodus 32:7-11,
13-14; Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 17, 19; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32
Tax collectors and
sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and
scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats
with them.” So to them he addressed this parable. “What man among you
having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the
ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?
And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and
neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my
lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in
heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous
people who have no need of repentance. “Or what woman having ten coins
and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching
carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls
together her friends and neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me
because I have found the coin that I lost.’ In just the same way, I
tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one
sinner who repents.” Then he said, “A man had two sons, and the younger
son said to his father, ‘Father give me the share of your estate that
should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them.
After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set
off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life
of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine
struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired
himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to
tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the
swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought,
‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to
eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my
father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven
and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as
you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back
to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught
sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son,
embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have
sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called
your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the
finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on
his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us
celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come
to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration
began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way
back, as he neared the house,he heard the sound of music and dancing.
He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The
servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has
slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father
came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look,
all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders;
yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
But when your son returns, who swallowed up your property with
prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ He said to him,
‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But
now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and
has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’” (Luke 15:1-32)
The classical Latin
author Lucretius bears angry testimony to one recurring feature of
religion in the history of man. It is that religion so very often tends
to be very fearful. Lucretius hated religion because it made people
fearful. They feared the gods and higher powers and were at constant
pains to placate them. This they did by means, for instance, of various
ceremonies and sacrifices. This is not the whole story of religion by
any means, but it is certainly an important part of the picture. Why is
the religious person of history so often fearful and anxious?
One
reason is because he has the feeling that in his actions he has not
done what is pleasing to the powers above. He senses that he has
irritated them and so he has a guilty conscience. Now, this guilty
conscience is not a bad thing — indeed if it can be combined with
common sense and a balanced religious teaching it is a very good thing
as it brings a person to an acknowledgment of God as he understands him
to be. The sense of sin is undoubtedly one of the foundations of the
religious sense and it has been a terrible setback for modern Western
man that for a variety of reasons he is weak in his sense of sin.
Characteristically he lacks religious fear because he is sceptical of
or indifferent to God, and this is because he does not see or sense him
empirically. While there are widespread spiritual movements in
contemporary societies, in relation to the all-holy God of revelation
who demands holiness of us Western man tends to be agnostic and
secular. As a result his religious conscience is dormant, even though
his social conscience may be quite alive. He accepts the ethical
demands of his social environment but not the far more critical
obligations coming from the God on whom he constantly depends. The
classic fear of the gods and of their displeasure at man’s deeds has
been lost because God is presumed to be but a phantom, or at least able
to be safely ignored. God is dead or is entirely beyond us. What is the
answer to this modern religious deficiency? The answer has to lie in a
recovery of the most basic religious truths, that God exists, that
while he transcends us he is also very near and watching all, and that
he is our Judge. Especially important is the recovery of a sense that
he is our Judge.
All this is
to say that typically the man with a lively sense of God and of his own
condition has a sense of guilt before him, and this brings with it a
religious fear. Lucretius was right as to the fact that while man
is drawn to God he approaches Him with servile fear. Putting it
differently man senses God to be the Holy One who is “tremendum et
fascinans” — awesome, fearsome, fascinating. But now, what do we see in our
Gospel text today? The all-holy Son of God made man is standing in the midst of
sinners who sought to be near him. We read that the “tax
collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus.”
(Luke 15:1-32)
There is little servile fear. So greatly did this seeming anomaly
strike the scribes and Pharisees that we read that they immediately
began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with
them.” God was all-holy and so by definition he could not tolerate the
presence of sin. Yet here in the practice of Jesus holiness was being
compromised and sin as present in sinners was being accepted. How could
Jesus be regarded as a prophet of the Holy One who required that we be
holy for he is holy? So it seemed to them. So Christ proceeded to
show why it is that God had come to dwell among sinful men. It was
because of his love for them. He is like the shepherd who leaves the
ninety nine sheep who are safe and goes after the stray till he finds
it. He is like the woman who leaves the coins she has and searches
diligently till she finds the one that has been lost. Most especially
he is like the indulgent father who showered his wayward son with such
munificence and now welcomes his son back after his years of miserable
irresponsibility. All this is to say that God is the Holy One indeed,
but it is a holiness that is infinitely loving. God is love. His love
is a holy love, and his holiness is a loving holiness. In a word, God
is our Father. His hatred of sin is shown in his seeking out sinners in
order to redeem them from their sin. His holiness was shown in the love
that shone forth in his agony on the cross. The Holy God is our Father.
The surprise of divine revelation is that he is love. Sinful man as
exemplified in the publicans and sinners of our Gospel passage today
draw near to our Lord to hear the word of God, and they know they are
loved. They are like the prodigal son of our Lord’s parable in which
the father is shown to be all good and at the same time all loving.
The long
and the short of all this is that the all-holy God has revealed to us
that he is first and foremost Father. He is the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and because of the grace of Christ we now can call God
our Father. Jesus is his image and perfect revelation. He who sees me,
sees the Father, our Lord said. We who are sinners can draw near to him
with confidence. Let us every day place ourselves in the presence of
Jesus and ask him to help us to know him, to love him and to follow
him, and to be purged of our sins and transformed into his likeness. He
wants to make us holy with a holiness that is like his holiness,
loving. Let us strive to know the love of Christ and make it the basis
of our life.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.2777-2785
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A second reflection on the Gospel
of the twenty fourth Sunday Year C
Scripture today: Exodus
32:7-11.13-14; Psalm 50; 1
Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32
Repentance
During the year 2001 there was a
wonderful movie on SBS television (Sydney), called “With Fire and Sword”,
set in Poland in the mid seventeenth century. Among many unforgettable
scenes was one of a valiant soldier who, while dying from being shot by
arrows, said the prayer, “Lord have mercy!” He remembered instinctively to
ask God for pardon at the moment of death. He did what the prodigal son did,
and did so at the most important moment of life, the moment of death. It
was
a wonderful way to die. Every day we should pray the Hail Mary, for in it we
ask Mary the mother of Christ and our mother - she who is mother of God - to
pray for us now and at the hour of our death. We ought ask her to pray that
we will turn to God our Father for pardon and mercy both now, and at the
hour of our death. In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet’s
father bemoans before his son how he was murdered without the chance to
obtain pardon for his sins. Shakespeare has him say, “I was cut off in the
blossoms of my sin, no reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my
imperfections on my head.” His life suddenly ended with his sins unpardoned,
no chance to do what the prodigal son returned to his father to do, to ask
pardon. In one of Cardinal Newman’s greatest books (The Development of
Christian Doctrine) finished just before he became a Catholic in
1845, he wrote the words: “time is short and eternity long.” In the now
famous 9/11 terrorist tragedy, thousands of people in the United States were
deprived of their lives without warning, affecting the families of countless
others all over the world including some in Australia. Life is precarious,
and none of us ought take for granted the time we have been given. We ought
continually turn to God, rich in mercy and ask in repentance for his pardon,
resolving to live in a way pleasing to him, and praying often for the grace
of final repentance and trust at the hour of death.
A priest once told me that he had
been close to death with the sickness he had. The experience gave him a
renewed awareness of how we should use assiduously the time remaining to us
for the glory of God. When we think of the precariousness of human life, of
how our possessions, our career, our hopes, our loved ones, our very life,
can suddenly collapse and be no more, we are led to think of what is
permanent and indeed eternal. St Paul reminds us in one of his letters to
set our hearts on the things of heaven rather than simply on the things of
earth. It is imperative that we repent and turn to God, resolving to live
for him and for the doing of his will. This repentance ought be going on all
our lives, every day. Every day we ought repent and express our sorrow to
God for not having desired and fulfilled his will. The great tragedies of
life, whether they affect an individual or the whole communities and
societies, remind us of the example of the prodigal son who experienced
tragedy and then sought forgiveness. When tragedy and reversals come, when
sin is discovered to be the source of disillusion and death, we ought
remember that our Lord’s parable is really about the loving father who was
so prodigal in his attitude to his wayward and irresponsible son. The
parable of today’s gospel is about God who is rich in mercy. It is this
which should inspire our everyday life, while keeping before us a wholesome
sense of the ugliness, the futility and the disaster of sin. It is the love
of God which Christ revealed above all and it is this which the Church
preaches and brings to everyone by her teaching and her sacraments. And it
is this which each of us should daily avail ourselves of by turning to God
constantly in a spirit of repentance, and approaching him frequently and
sincerely in the sacrament of confession. And then we ought bear witness to
God’s mercy by being merciful and forgiving ourselves, for as we measure out
to others so it will be measured to us.
With the thought of God’s love for us, with the thought that Christ loves
me, let us turn away from sin, then!
(E.J.Tyler)
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Choose mortifications that don't mortify others.
(The Way,
no.179)
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What is prayer?
Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God, or the petition
of good things from him in accord with his will. It is always the gift
of God who comes to encounter man. Christian prayer is the personal and
living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is
infinitely good, with his Son Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Spirit
who dwells in their hearts. (CCC 2558-2565, 2590)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.534)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Monday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 17) St Robert
Bellarmine, bishop and doctor of the Church (Picture) Born 4
October 1542 at Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy as Roberto Francesco
Romolo. Died in the morning of 17 
September 1621 at
Rome, Italy of natural causes; buried in Rome; relics translated to the
church of Saint Ignatius, Rome on 21 June 1923
Third of ten children on
Vincenzo Bellarmine and Cinzia Cervini, a family of impoverished
nobles. His mother, a niece of Pope Marcellus II, was dedicated to
almsgiving, prayer, meditation, fasting, and mortification. Suffered
assorted health problems all his life. Educated by Jesuits as a boy.
Joined the Jesuits on 20 September 1560 over his father's opposition;
he wanted Robert to enter politics. Studied at the Collegio Romano from
1560 to 1563, Jesuit centers in Florence in 1563 and Mondovi, Piedmont;
the University of Padua in 1567 and 1568, and the University of
Louvain, Flanders in 1569. Ordained on Palm Sunday, 1570 in Ghent,
Belgium.
Professor of theology at the University
of Louvain from 1570 to 1576. A the request of Pope Gregory XIII, he
taught polemical theology at the Collegio Romano from 1576 to 1587.
While there he wrote Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei
adversus hujus temporis hereticos, the most complete work of the day to
defend Catholicism against Protestant attack. Spiritual director of the
Roman College from 1588. Taught Jesuit students and other children;
wrote a children's catechism, Dottrina cristiana breve. Wrote a
catechism for teachers, Dichiarazione piu copiosa della dottrina
cristiana. Confessor of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga until his death, and
then worked for the boy's canonization. In 1590 he worked in France to
defend the interests of the Church during a period of turmoil and
conflict. Member of the commission for the 1592 revision of the Vulgate
Bible. Rector of the Collegio Romano from 1592 to 1594. Provincial of
the Jesuit province in Naples from 1594 to 1597. Theologian to Pope
Clement VIII from 1597 to 1599. Examiner of bishops and consultor of
the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition
in 1597; strongly considered with discipline among the bishops. Created
Cardinal-priest on 3 March 1598 by Pope Clement VIII; he lived an
austere life in Rome, giving most of his money to the poor. At one
point he used the tapestries in his living quarters to clothe the poor,
saying that "the walls won't catch cold."
Defended the Apostolic See against anti-clericals in
Venice, and the political tenets of James I of England. Wrote
exhaustive works against heresies of the day. Took a position
fundamentally democratic - authority originates with God, is vested in
the people, who entrust it to fit rulers, a concept which brought him
trouble with the kings of both England and France. Spiritual father of
Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. Helped Saint Francis de Sales obtain formal
approval of the Visitation Order. Noted preacher. Archbishop of Capua
on 18 March 1602. Part of the two conclaves of 1605. Involved in
disputes between the Republic of Venice and the Vatican in 1606 and
1607 concerning clerical discipline and Vatican authority. Involved in
the controversy between King James I and the Vatican in 1607 and 1609
concerning cntrol of the Church in England. Wrote Tractatus de
potestate Summi Pontificis in rebus temporalibus adversus Gulielmum
Barclaeum in opposition to Gallicanism. Opposed action against Galileo
Galilei in 1615, and established a friendly correspondence with him,
but was forced to deliver the order for the scientist to submit to the
Church. Part of the conclave of 1621, and was considered for Pope.
Theological advisor to Pope Paul V. Head of the Vatican library.
Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Rites. Prefect of the Sacred
Congregation of the Index. Proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on 17
September 1931.
Venerated 1627 by Pope Urban VIII when he began the
process for canonization. Beatified 13 May 1923 by Pope Pius
XI. Canonized 29 June 1930 by Pope Pius XI.
(Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
1 Timothy
2:1-8; Psalm 28:2, 7, 8-9;
Luke 7:1-10
When Jesus had
finished all his words to the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion
there had a slave who was ill and about to die, and he was valuable to
him. When he heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to him,
asking him to come and save the life of his slave. They approached
Jesus and strongly urged him to come, saying, “He deserves to have you
do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for
us.” And Jesus went with them, but when he was only a short distance
from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, “Lord, do not
trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.
Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you; but say the
word and let my servant be healed. For I too am a person 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 at him and,
turning, said to the crowd following him, “I tell you, not even in
Israel have I found such faith.” When the messengers returned to the
house, they found the slave in good health. (Luke 7:1-10)
Faith
is not a virtue held in much esteem in secular society. Intelligence,
ability, various other aptitudes are regarded highly, but scarcely faith.
Indeed, faith if anything is regarded as a weak man’s virtue. The important
thing is making up one’s own mind and, rather than trusting in another,
having the resources to stand on one’s own feet and act with personal
decision. Yet once again our Gospel scene shows us how much store our Lord
put on faith. At the end of our scene in which the centurion sends his
message to Jesus, we are told that
“When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him and, turning, said to the
crowd following him, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such
faith.’ When the messengers returned to the house, they found the slave
in good health.”
(Luke 7:1-10)
Our Lord was “amazed” and the centurion was held up in honour by him
before those who were with our Lord at this moment. In his public
ministry he was forever seeking faith, faith in his person and faith in
his word. Some of his greatest revelations were met with unbelief. We
remember the great occasion in the synagogue at Capernaum when he
revealed perhaps the most personal of all his intentions: the gift of
the holy Eucharist. He would offer his body and his blood to be eaten
and drunk, and this would give life, eternal life, to all who partook
of it. We surely cannot imagine the emotion our Lord felt at revealing
this and in speaking of it! Was there anything more personal? To
make it abundantly clear that he meant exactly what he said he did not
explain that he would do this sacramentally. Perhaps he foresaw that if
he included this in his teaching at this point, people might have taken
his words as metaphorical. The bread and the wine would have been
regarded as signs of his body and blood and nothing more. But what was
the result. It seems to have been something like a mass exodus: many of
his disciples walked with him no more and returned to their homes. They
lacked faith.
Faith is the
foundation and without it, as we see in the Gospels, no
progress can be made in responding to the initiatives and the word of
God. No progress can be made in entering into union with God’s Envoy,
Jesus Christ our Redeemer and our God. It all depends on faith. Time
and again in the Gospels we see that this all-important faith is
possible to anyone provided his heart is right. Our centurion is a
manifest example of this. He was not of the chosen people, yet his
goodness of heart led him to be generous to them. On another occasion
our Lord warned the leaders who refused him belief that the first would
be last and the last would be first. Here we have an example of the
last being first. Our Lord said that people would come from the north
and the south, from the east and the west to take their places in the
kingdom of God, while the children would be cast outside. He was
pointing to the universal Church to come, founded on Peter and the
Apostles. Here in the centurion we have a pointer to the faith that
would spring from the hearts of the Gentiles, a faith that would draw
peoples from the four corners of the earth to a recognition and
acceptance of Christ. A similar instance is recorded in the Gospel of
St John when our Lord stops by the well in the land of Samaria. He
reveals himself to the Samaritan woman who is there drawing water. She
is not one of the chosen people but rather is a heretic Samaritan. She
believes and brings the village to him, and the village in turn
believes and accepts him as the Saviour of the world. The example of
the centurion and our Lord’s high praise of him reminds us of how very
fundamental is our gift of faith. We need not have been granted this
gift. It came to us at our baptism as a gift of the Holy Spirit. How we
ought cherish this gift! How we ought live by it and never allow within
ourselves any tendency to withhold assent to any teaching of the Church
uttered and proclaimed in the name of Christ.
Let us so live by
faith, let us so assent to each and every Christian
dogma and doctrine taught by the Church as to please Christ and God our
Father. All depends on the foundation that is our faith. Let us not
allow anything to undermine that foundation. Let us go to Mary and ask
her to help us with her prayers for she is the one who believed
utterly, never failing in her faith.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Where there is no self-denial, there is no virtue.
(The Way,
no.180)
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Why is there a universal
call to prayer?
Because through creation God first calls every being
from nothingness.
Even after the Fall man continues to be capable of recognizing his
Creator and retains a desire for the One who has called him into
existence. All religions, and the whole history of salvation in
particular, bear witness to this human desire for God. It is God first
of all, however, who ceaselessly draws every person to the mysterious
encounter known as prayer. (CCC 2566-2567)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.535)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September
18) St
Joseph of Cupertino Born 17 June 1603 as Joseph Desa
at Cupertino, diocese of Nardo, in the kingdom of Naples. Died 18
September 1663 at Ossimo of a rapidly developed fever. Beatified 1753
by Pope Benedict XIV. Canonized 16 July 1767 by Pope Clement XIII
(Saints)
Joseph's father, Felice Desa was a poor
carpenter who died before Joseph was born. Creditors drove his
mother, Francesca Panara, from her home, and Joseph was born in a
stable. Starting at age 8, Joseph received ecstatic visions that left
him gaping and staring into space. He had a hot temper, which his
strict mother worked to overcome. Apprenticed to a shoemaker, at
17 Joseph applied for admittance to the Friars Minor Conventuals, but
was refused due to his lack of education. He applied to the Capuchins,
was accepted as a lay-brother in 1620, but his ecstasies made him
unsuitable for work, and he was dismissed. Abused by his family, he
continued his prayers, and was accepted as an oblate at the Franciscan
convent near Cupertino. His virtues were such that he became a cleric
at 22, a priest at 25. Joseph still had little education, could barely
read or write, but received such a gift of spiritual knowledge and
discernment that he could solve intricate questions. His life became a
series of visions and ecstasies, which could be triggered any time or
place by the sound of a church bell, church music, the mention of the
name of God or of the Blessed Virgin or of a saint, any event in the
life of Christ, the sacred Passion, a holy picture, the thought of the
glory in heaven, etc. Yelling, beating, pinching, burning, piercing
with needles - none of this would bring him from his trances, but he
would return to the world on hearing the voice of his superior in the
order. He would often levitate and float (which led to his patronage of
people involved in air travel), and could hear heavenly music. Even in
the 17th century, there was interest in the unusual, and Joseph's
ecstasies in public caused both admiration and disturbance in the
community. For 35 years he was not allowed to attend choir, go to the
common refectory, walk in procession, or say Mass in church. To prevent
making a spectacle, he was ordered to remain in his room with a private
chapel. He was brought before the Inquisition, and sent from one
Capuchin or Franciscan house to another. But Joseph retained his joyous
spirit, submitting to Divine Providence, keeping seven Lents of 40 days
each year, never letting his faith be shaken.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: 1 Timothy
3:1-13; Psalm 101:1b-2ab, 2cd-3ab, 5,
6; Luke 7:11-17
Jesus journeyed to
a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied
him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was
being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A
large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he was
moved with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” He stepped
forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he
said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” The dead man sat up and began to
speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they
glorified God, exclaiming, “A great prophet has arisen in our midst,”
and “God has visited his people.” This report about him spread through
the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding region. (Luke 7:11-17)
I ask you who are
now thinking of the event in this Gospel passage, has there been its
equal in the history of the world? I do not mean that no one has ever
raised anyone from the dead. We read in the Old Testament how the great
prophet Elisha raised someone from the dead, and Peter does so too in
the Acts
of
the Apostles. But neither of these did so with such immediacy and so
effortlessly as does Jesus in our scene today. He comes upon a funeral
procession leaving the town of Nain, and when he sees the poor widow
accompanying the body of her son, he steps forward and at a word raises
the young man immediately to life
(Luke 7:11-17). The divine power of
Christ! But the further question is, what does this almighty and
astonishing power manifest? It manifests a profound and spontaneous
compassion which led to the exercise of this power. Christ’s powerful
works show forth his sacred heart. His heart is revealed as being
profoundly compassionate in the face of suffering man. Long before
Yahweh God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had appeared to Moses
in the Burning Bush and had said that he was aware of the sufferings of
his people. He had compassion for them and was now sending them a
liberator. By the power of Yahweh Moses would lead his people out
of their oppression into the promised land. In this great liberating
act the power of Yahweh would manifest his compassion, and reveal that
he is a God rich in mercy. This is the unfolding theme of revealed
religion. God is almighty and is only one in being. The power that he
displays and exercises reveals that his heart is a heart of love and
mercy. The greatest act of the heart of God is to have sent his divine
Son and now he, God the Son made man, dwells with men and in showing
forth the power of God he reveals his compassion and mercy. The sacred
heart of Jesus is the special revelation of the Gospels.
Christ gave back to
the widow of Nain what she had lost. But what of all the other
suffering widows in the land of Israel at the time? What of all the
widows in the entire world at that time? That is to say, what of evil
in the world? The world abounds with suffering and it is clear that our
Lord did not come to take away all of human suffering. The reading I
have done of the matter gives me the impression that the great
stumbling block of many of our Jewish brothers is that Jesus did not
establish a time of peace and freedom from suffering. Perhaps I am
mistaken on this, but my understanding is that their reading of the
Scriptures leads them to interpret the prophecies as pointing to a
Messiah who will bring a kingdom to the earth that will take away the
suffering of man. The world flows with evil and suffering and the
question of the agnostic, the atheist and indeed many believers is,
what is Christ (since he is God!) doing about it? If Christ is God and
lives among us in his Church - which the Church ceaselessly claims to
be the case - he should surely be doing repeatedly what he did in
today’s Gospel passage. He would be restoring to afflicted man what has
been lost to him. Was Christ was present during the holocaust when
there was repeat upon repeat of this scene of the funeral procession
leaving the town of Nain? If he was, then Christ stood by without doing
anything. This is the old and ever-recurring problem of evil. But no,
his mission was to take away the sin of the world and the miracles of
Christ such as the one in today’s Gospel are signs of this. We do not
know why God allows the world to remain broken and profoundly flawed as
it is. In his wisdom and compassion he will draw good out of evil, just
as he drew untold good out of the death of his Son. Christ joined
suffering humanity in his passion and death thus showing that God’s
plan is not to take away suffering but to make it the means of
redemption and sanctification. By his passion and death Christ redeemed
the world.
Christ is present
in the midst of suffering man to make this very suffering the means of
the transformation of man and the universe. The raising of the son of
the widow of Nain shows that God in his compassion and love has the
power and the will to make all things new. Let us take our stand with
Christ and take up the work. His work will be done if we follow in his
footsteps. By living with him we shall die with him, and in this way we
shall reign with him.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Interior mortification. I don't believe in your interior
self-denial if I see that you despise, that you do not practise,
mortification of the senses.
(The Way,
no.181)
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How is Abraham a model of prayer?
Abraham is a model of prayer because he walked in the presence of God,
heard and obeyed him. His prayer was a battle of faith because he
continued to believe in the fidelity of God even in times of trial.
Besides, after having received in his own tent the visit of the Lord
who confided his plan to him, Abraham dared to intercede for sinners
with bold confidence. (CCC 2570-2573, 2592)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.536)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Wednesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 19) St
Januarius, bishop and martyr (4th century) Bishop of Benevento
(Italy). He died a martyr in Naples during the persecution of
Diocletian. His dried blood contained in a phial liquifies several
times each year.
(For a longer
account of St Januarius, click here)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: 1 Timothy 3:14-16; Psalm 111:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Luke 7:31-35
Jesus said to the
crowds: “To what shall I compare the people of this generation? What
are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and
call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not
dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.’ For John the Baptist
came neither eating food nor drinking wine, and you said, ‘He is
possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and you
said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors
and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” (Luke 7:31-35)
Holy Scripture is,
among other things, the inspired record of God’s dealings with sin. God
has made and sustained the world, and man’s sin has wrecked the work of
his hands. The story of salvation as recorded in Scripture and conveyed
in the Church’s Tradition is the history of God’s undoing of the sad
business of sin, and his making all things new again. One thing that
comes through in the entire story is God’s long-lasting patience. While
in our talk of God we speak analogically, in a sense in his work God
has had catastrophic reversals
and disappointments and they began in heaven itself. Long before man
and the visible universe God’s work of creation began in heaven. He
created the world of angels, spiritual beings with freedom, great
beauty and power. But what happened? Many turned against him and a
terrible conflagration in heaven broke out, as it were. Those who
turned out so badly were cast out and thrown into everlasting hell. If
in some sense analogous to our own experience God could grieve, surely
this major upset in heaven caused him to grieve. What many angels
freely chose together with the baleful consequences of their dark
choice went entirely against his plans for them, but so it was. The
entire spiritual world was rent asunder into two great camps, those who
were entirely for God and those who were utterly against him and so it
has been ever since. But now, what was God’s response to this sad
outcome? God was patient. He did not withdraw the gift of existence
from those who had refused him, and he will continue to sustain them in
being for all eternity. We see the same pattern in his dealings with
our world. Our beautiful universe came lovingly from his hands and at a
certain point he created man and woman - by what process and when we do
not know. We know from revelation that he made man highly endowed in
nature and in grace.
But what happened?
A catastrophe again occurred that mirrored what had happened in heaven,
and it was the rebellion of man. God said to the man in the Garden,
“What have you done?” God’s work again had been shattered. If only the
angels, and if only man, had done what God wanted! If only his will had
been obeyed! If only we each of us would do the will of God! But it was
not so. But now, what was God’s response to this terrible spoliation of
his work? God was patient. He began again and the story of salvation is
that of God beginning again and again. Now he has a long struggle
ahead, one that has and will cost him a great deal. There is one image
in the prophet Jeremiah of God at work. It is the image of the potter
always beginning again when his pot turns out badly. God tries one
thing and then another. He punishes, he coaxes. He is patient and if
the sinner lives on in his sin while the just one suffers, it is
because God is patient and is giving him time to repent and giving the
just one time to merit even more. In our Gospel passage today our Lord
speaks of God trying one thing and then another. He sends John the
Baptist using one approach, then his very own Son following a somewhat
different approach, but to little avail. “To what shall I compare
the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like
children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played
the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did
not weep.’ For John the Baptist came neither eating food nor drinking
wine, and you said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came
eating and drinking and you said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a
drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is
vindicated by all her children.”
(Luke 7:31-35)
However, God is patient, and his patience will win out. He will
conquer and he will save. His kingdom will come and that kingdom will
never end. But woe betide the one who abuses the patience of God and
persists finally in his sin.
Let us be
profoundly grateful for the patience of God. He has been patient with
sinful man and patient with each of us. He loves us as a holy and
loving Father and he wishes us to turn away from sin and live in love
for him. Let us begin again and not waste the time he so lovingly and
patiently grants us to attain the holiness for which we are made. So
then, now I begin!
(E.J.Tyler)
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Let us drink to the last drop the chalice of
pain in this poor present life. What does it matter to suffer for ten
years, twenty, fifty... if afterwards there is heaven for ever, for
ever... for ever?
And, above all — rather than because of the reward, propter retributionem — what does suffering matter if we suffer to console, to
please God our Lord, in a spirit of reparation, united to him on his
Cross; in a word: if we suffer for Love?...
(The Way,
no.182)
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How did Moses pray?
The prayer of Moses was typical of contemplative prayer. God, who
called to Moses from the burning bush, lingered in conversation with
him often and at length, “face to face, like a man with his friend”
(Exodus 33:11). In this intimacy with God, Moses attained the strength
to intercede tenaciously for his people: his prayer thus prefigured the
intercession of the one mediator, Christ Jesus. (CCC 2574-2577, 2593)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.537)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thursday of the twenty fourth week of Ordinary Time II
(September 20) Saint Andrew Kim
Taegon, priest and martyr, and Saint Paul Chong Hasang, martyr, and
their companions, martyrs. (Saints)
The Christian faith was introduced in Korea during the 17th
century through the zeal of a group of lay persons. But from the very
beginning these Christians suffered under terrible persecutions that,
over the course of the nineteenth century, gave the Church many
martyrs. Outstanding among these were the first Korean priest and
devoted Church pastor, Andrew Kim of Taegu, and the lay apostle Paul
Chong of Hasang. Among the Korean martyrs who struggled valiantly for
Christ were bishops and priests, but for the most part they were laity,
men and women, married and single, young and old.
(For
more on the Korean martyrs, click here)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture
today: 1 Timothy
4:12-16; Psalm 111:7-8, 9,
10; Luke 7:36-50
A certain 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; hence, 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.” (Luke 7:36-50)
This Gospel passage
is a beautiful scene and full of meaning for fallen man. The problem is
that all too many do not appreciate that they are fallen. Christ is at
the centre of our Gospel passage, but on either side of him are two
protagonists, the Pharisee and the sinful woman. We are surely reminded
of the story our Lord told elsewhere of the two who were praying in the
Temple, one was a Pharisee and the other a
Publican. The Publican
went home right with God because of his prayer, while the Pharisee did
not. The Publican’s prayer was a repeated plea to God for mercy and
pardon for his sins, while the Pharisee’s prayer was a repeated
presentation before God of his own supposed virtues and a comparison of
these with the sins of the Publican behind him. In our Gospel scene
today (Luke 7:36-50)
Simon the Pharisee
invites our Lord to dine in his house with him, an invitation our Lord
graciously accepts. The usual marks of courtesy and honour are not
extended to our Lord when he arrives (water for his feet, an embrace,
and oil for his head). As our Lord later points out to the Pharisee,
how great is the contrast between his behaviour and that of the sinful
woman! But what is behind this difference? It is surely the sense of
sin together with faith in divine compassion. The woman enters and
approaches our Lord profoundly conscious of her sinfulness but at the
same time - and perhaps especially at the moment of being in his
presence - that in him God loved her, understood her, was forgiving her
and accepted her. How could she have wept at the feet of our Lord with
such confidence, wiping his feet with her hair and then anointing them
with the oil from the alabaster jar, unless she had sensed that she was
fully known, understood and loved? For all her sinfulness she had
attained an understanding of the heart of God and his love for the
repentant sinner. She saw in Jesus with utter clarity the compassion of
God for her. She loved because she was forgiven and she was forgiven
because she loved.
Given our scene, it
is almost unthinkable that the Pharisee would (or could) have responded
to the presence of our Lord in a way comparable to that of the woman.
He had no sense of sin or very little of it. He had little need to be
forgiven, so he would have felt - and thought. With this lack of a deep
sense of sin and of his need for the pardon and mercy of God he was
insensitive to the person of our Lord himself. He did not approach our
Lord desirous of attaining a deeper relationship with God (as did the
woman) because he probably thought that he had a fairly good
relationship with God as it was. He felt little need of our Lord in any
absolute sense whereas the woman did. She needed God and she needed to
be reconciled with him and she saw in Jesus the means of attaining this
and the actual gift of it. In his presence she sensed that she would be
forgiven and was being forgiven. Her love swelled and overflowed in
humble, contrite gratitude and poured itself out in her tears and in
her anointing of the feet of Jesus. Then the word of Christ came: her
sins were forgiven. That this was not just a declaration but an act in
which Christ personally forgave her sins is clear from the reaction of
the others at table. “Who is this who even forgives sins?” She obtained
the forgiveness of sins because she approached Christ with true
contrition for sin and with true love. The Pharisee did not. She went
away right with God whereas the Pharisee did not. Now, that same power
to forgive sins Christ conferred on the Apostles the very first day he
rose from the dead. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he said to them, “whose
sins you forgive they are forgiven them. Whose sins you retain, they
are retained.” (John 20). This power to forgive sins is exercised in
the Sacrament of Penance and it is above all - but not exclusively
- in that Sacrament that the contrite Christian approaches Christ
with the love and gratitude that the sinful woman approached him in our
Gospel scene today. She is a teacher of sinful man.
Christ came to take
away the sin of the world and it is this marvellous power that he
entrusted to the Church’s pastors. It is a principal reason for being a
Christian and a member of the Church Christ founded. Let us often
return to this moving Gospel scene and learn from the loving sorrow of
the woman to approach Christ for forgiveness, knowing that it will most
certainly be given.
(E.J.Tyler)
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The eyes! Through them many iniquities enter
the soul. — What experiences like David's! — If you guard your sight
you have assured the guard of your heart.
(The Way,
no.183)
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In the Old Testament, what
relationship do the king and the temple have to prayer?
The prayer
of the People of God developed in the shadow of the dwelling place of
God – the Ark of the Covenant, then the Temple – under the guidance of
their shepherds. Among them there was David, the King “after God’s own
heart,” the shepherd who prayed for his people. His prayer was a model
for the prayer of the people because it involved clinging to the divine
promise and a trust filled with love for the One who is the only King
and Lord. (CCC 2578-2580, 2594)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.538)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist
Friday of the twenty fourth week of Ordinary Time II
(September 21) Saint Matthew, Apostle and evangelist. Also called Levi, he was the son of Alphaeus. He was a publican, that is, a tax collector for the Romans. His profession was hateful to the Jews. Nevertheless, our lord called him to be one of the Twelve. Matthew’s vocation reminds us that sanctity is not reserved for privileged persons. All states in life, all professions, all noble tasks may be sanctified, as the Church teaches. Matthew is one of the Twelve Apostles. We do not know details of his work of evangelization or of his martyrdom which perhaps took place in Persia. Tradition unanimously acknowledges him as the author of the first Gospel, written in Aramaic, the language that our Lord himself spoke, and translated into Greek afterwards. St Matthew’s name appears among the other apostles in the Roman Canon. (Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-13; Psalm 19:2-3,
4-5; Matthew 9:9-13
As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him,
“Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in
his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and
his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why
does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” He heard this
and said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I
did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Matthew 9:9-13)
There have been
many people in history who have had the gift of attracting and
influencing others in a notable way. But it would be difficult to think
of a person who was able to attract people so instantly and so
enduringly to himself and, in himself, to a high and demanding
religious cause as did Jesus of Nazareth. He met people, invited them
to follow him, and they did right up to eventual martyrdom. Let us
enter into the mind and heart of our
Lord’s first followers,
taking Matthew as an example of them. We read that as “Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. Christ’s call
to him was simple, unadorned and peremptory: “He said to him, ‘Follow
me.’ And he got up and followed him.”
(Matthew
9:9-13)
Reading between the lines we surely detect an immense joy and
appreciation on the part of Matthew for the call he had just received.
He sensed that in Jesus he had found the treasure of his life, the
pearl of great price for which he was prepared to forego everything if
necessary. He had been given the opportunity of a lifetime, which was a
personal invitation simply to be with Jesus and to share in his life
and work. The case is the same with the others. The passage we are
thinking of is from the Gospel of St Matthew. St John also tells us
with fondness of the call of our Lord’s first disciples. In his first
chapter he tells how John the Baptist pointed our Lord out to two of
his disciples as the Lamb of God. The two set out to follow Jesus, and
were invited by him to come and see where he lived. They did and became
his life-long followers. One of them, Andrew, went to his brother Simon
and told him that they had found the Messiah. He brought him to Jesus
and Simon became his disciple, indeed, the visible rock of the Church.
It all points to a sense in these disciples that Jesus was everything.
He was all that they needed. He was the One they wished to live and die
for. Their response to Jesus is a testimony to the grandeur of Jesus as
the Saviour of the world.
The case should be
the same with every Christian. Each baptized person has been called by
Christ to belong to him and has been placed in him by the grace of the
Holy Spirit. St Paul writes that this is the mystery that has at last
been revealed, Christ in you, your hope of glory. We who are baptized
have received a call similar to that of Matthew in that Jesus invites
us to live in his company and in his friendship, sharing in his mission
in the midst of our daily work and activities, accompanying him along
the daily road to Calvary, living and dying with him and in due time
rising with him to glory. But we must start with a discovery of the
uniqueness and grandeur of the person of Jesus. We cannot hope to be a
Christian if we have not discovered the living and very real person of
Christ. We have to catch his gaze, notice that he is looking upon us,
realize that his eyes are trying to catch ours. He wants us to hear him
in the depths of our hearts. Just as the first disciples of Christ as
exemplified in the person of the Apostle Matthew discovered Jesus, so
must we. Christianity is not just a way of life, or a religion in a
general sense with Jesus as its founder, or some benevolent attitude to
life and to others. No. It is above all the knowledge and love of a
living Person who has penetrated our hearts and seized our affections
and our spiritual loyalty. The Christian religion is Christ and the
wholehearted following of him. Matthew began to live the Christian
religion when he heard the call of Christ and left what he was doing to
follow him. The other disciples followed suit, and so it has been from
generation to generation since then. The Church’s mission is to call
all, all the nations, the whole world to follow Jesus in a very
personal way in the great family of his Church. That is to say, the
work of the Church and of all of Christ’s faithful is to make disciples
of all the nations in the way that Matthew became a disciple, hearing
the invitation of Christ, then rising to follow him and live in his
company no matter what the cost. There was a sad exception and it was
Judas. He too was called by Christ although we are not given the
circumstances. But after walking with Christ and in intimacy with him
his heart secretly turned away. It led to the catastrophe of his
betraying the Lord of life. Let us take note of this and remember that
we must be vigilant over our hearts, being careful every day to fight
sin and renounce Satan. Christ is to be the Lord of our life in all its
details. Let us not fail him.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Why look around if you carry 'your world' within you?
(The Way, no.184)
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What is the role of prayer in the
mission of the prophets?
The prophets drew from prayer the light and strength to exhort the
people to faith and to conversion of heart. They entered into great
intimacy with God and interceded for their brothers and sisters to whom
they proclaimed what they had seen and heard from the Lord. Elijah was
the father of the prophets, of those who sought the face of God. On
Mount Carmel he achieved the return of the people to the faith, thanks
to the intervention of God to whom he prayed: “Answer me, O Lord,
answer me!” (1 Kings 18:37). (CCC 2581-2584)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.539)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Saturday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September
22) Saint
Thomas of
Villanova (1486-1555) was known for his promotion of studies and
missions in the
Order of Saint Augustine, and for his love and care for the poor.
Thomas García Martínez was born in 1486 in Fuenllana,
Ciudad Real, Spain. He spent his childhood in the family home in
Villanova de los Infantes. A gifted student, Thomas entered the
University of Alcalá at the age of 15. He earned a degree in
Theology in a very short time, and was asked to join the faculty of
this famous university. His reputation as an excellent teacher spread,
and the prestigious University of Salamanca offered Thomas a
professorship in 1516. He refused the position, instead seeking
admission into the Order of Saint Augustine. He professed his vows as
an Augustinian in 1517 and was ordained a Priest in 1518. Recognizing
his leadership ability, his fellow Augustinians chose him to serve as
Prior (local superior) and later as Provincial (regional superior). In
this position, Thomas encouraged a more faithful adherence to the
principles of Augustinian life. He also promoted missionary activity by
Augustinians in the New World. Thomas grew into a deeply spiritual
life. He lived simply, giving away the small fortune that he inherited
from his parents. Asked to become Bishop of Granada, Thomas refused,
preferring the simple life to a life of power and prestige. Several
years later, Thomas was asked to become Bishop of Valencia. When he
refused again, the authorities persuaded Thomas' religious superiors to
order him under his vow of obedience to accept. He reluctantly
accepted, and became Archbishop of Valencia in 1545. There he found an
archdiocese in spiritual chaos. He began his episcopacy by visiting
every parish in the Archdiocese to discover what were the needs of the
people. He then set up programs in which funds provided by the wealthy
would help to provide for the poor. In order to have a well-formed
clergy, Thomas started Presentation Seminary in 1550. He established
schools where the young would have access to a quality education. He
turned his own home into a sort of soup kitchen and shelter, giving to
the poor and the homeless food to eat and a place to sleep. For that
reason he was known as Beggar Bishop and Father of the Poor. Thomas
became ill in 1551. As his illness progressed and he grew weaker, he
gave away all of his remaining possessions. He died September 8, 1555
in Valencia. His remains are preserved at the Cathedral there.
(Saints)
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture
today: 1 Timothy
6:13-16; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 4, 5; Luke
8:4-15
When a large crowd
gathered, with people from one town after another journeying to Jesus,
he spoke in a parable. “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as
he sowed, some seed fell on the path and was trampled, and the birds of
the sky ate it up. Some seed fell on rocky ground, and when it grew, it
withered for lack of moisture. Some seed fell among thorns, and the
thorns grew with it and choked it. And some seed fell on good soil, and
when it grew, it produced fruit a hundredfold.” After saying this, he
called out, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.” Then his
disciples asked him what the meaning of this parable might be. He
answered, “Knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God has been
granted to you; but to the rest, they are made known through parables
so that they may look but not see, and hear but not understand. “This
is the meaning of the parable. The seed is the word of God. Those on
the path are the ones who have heard, but the Devil comes and takes
away the word from their hearts that they may not believe and be saved.
Those on rocky ground are the ones who, when they hear, receive the
word with joy, but they have no root; they believe only for a time and
fall away in time of temptation. As for the seed that fell among
thorns, they are the ones who have heard, but as they go along, they
are choked by the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, and they
fail to produce mature fruit. But as for the seed that fell on rich
soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it
with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.”
(Luke 8:4-15)
At times I have
heard people say, I wish God would make it clear to what is the best
thing for me to do! It would be so much easier! Well, at times God does
make it very clear what he wants but not by sending a telegram from
heaven, or appearing in person and giving the order, or sending an
angel to make the announcement. God generally makes his will known
through secondary agents in our life (he is the First Agent) or
suggestively through circumstances. But it requires that our heart be
genuinely attuned to seeking
to know his will.
I suppose it could be likened to any search we are engaged in. If one
is not searching for something it could pass before our very eyes and
not be noticed. But if we have lost something and it is precious to us
we search diligently with our faculties straining in full focus.
Because we want it we are more likely to see it. So too if we are to
discern what is the will of God we must listen with our whole heart
given to the work. Something of this requirement is shown in our Lord’s
words in today’s Gospel passage. He has a “large crowd” before him
drawn from many towns, consisting of persons undoubtedly of mixed
attitudes and dispositions. It may be taken as representative of all
people. Some would have been there full of mere curiosity, others with
hopes of healings, some genuinely seeking God, others with a liking for
the whole experience, others again looking for a diversion. As far as
our Lord was concerned, the issue in question was their readiness and
desire for his word, and their willingness to put it into practice. Our
Lord sought disciples and indeed after he rose from the dead he
entrusted the Apostles and the infant Church with the mission of making
disciples - they were to go to the whole world and make disciples of
all the nations. Here in our Gospel passage today (Luke 8:4-15)
our Lord simply tells
the crowd a story - the story of a sower going out to sow. His story
was suggestive and insinuating. Then he called out, “Whoever has ears
to hear ought to hear.” This concluding appeal asked for a heart that
truly listened, and his refusal to go further implies that he could see
his audience lacked that heart.
Not only is that
the obvious meaning of our Lord’s peremptory ending to his public
parable, but it turns out to be the meaning of the parable itself. To
his disciples he proceeds without hesitation to give the meaning of the
parable and its climax comes when our Lord speaks of those who are the
rich soil and who produce the harvest. They “are the ones who,
when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good
heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.”
(Luke
8:4-15).
They have a generous and good heart and they persevere. That is to say
they are good and they truly desire God and his holy will. They are
generous and are ready to give without counting the cost. They are
ready to persevere in the road of discipleship in the midst of hardship
and persecution. Those with these dispositions of heart are the ones
who have the “ears to hear.” They have what it takes to be disciples of
Christ and will bear the hundredfold harvest that God wishes to see.
But without this readiness and desire of the heart “the Devil”, or
their own lack of spiritual “root” or depth, or their “anxieties
and riches and pleasures of life” will vitiate and frustrate the
promise of the word that is proclaimed to them. So then, Christ is
asking of all those who approach him a good and generous heart that is
ready to persevere in the path he places before them. That path is a
personal love for him and a readiness to follow closely in his
footsteps. How can we know if we have this disposition? We cannot know
this for certain - only God can see with utter clarity the true state
of our hearts, but we can perseveringly ask God to give us the
dispositions he requires. We can ask him to pour his grace into our
hearts and create in us a new heart, and to help us to be faithful to
the light and the grace he gives us. That is to say, we can ask the
Holy Spirit to make us worthy disciples of Christ. We ought pray that
God will give us the “ears to hear” and a heart that is “generous and
good” and able to “bear fruit through perseverance.”
Let us place
ourselves among the crowd to whom our Lord is speaking, but as persons
who wish to be counted among his disciples. Let us gaze on him in
spirit and hear his words as the word of God. Let us resolve to follow
him with a good and generous heart right to the end whatever be the
cost. Let us resolve to persevere by starting again daily. So then, now
I begin!
(E.J.Tyler)
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The world admires only spectacular sacrifice, because it does not
realize the value of sacrifice that is hidden and silent.
( The Way,
no.185)
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What is
the importance of the Psalms in
prayer?
The Psalms
are the summit of prayer in the Old Testament: the Word of God become
the prayer of man. Inseparably both personal and communal, and inspired
by the Holy Spirit, this prayer sings of God’s marvelous deeds in
creation and in the history of salvation. Christ prayed the Psalms and
brought them to fulfillment. Thus they remain an essential and
permanent element of the prayer of the Church suited to people of every
condition and time. (CCC 2579, 2585-2589, 2596-2597)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.540)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
I am the Saviour of
all people, says the Lord.
Whatever their troubles I
will answer their cry, and I will always be their Lord.
Father, guide us as you
guide creation according to your law of love.
May we love one another and come to
perfection in the eternal life prepared for us.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September 23) Saint
Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), priest, and Saint Constantius
St. Padre Pio da Pietrelcina (1887-1968) In
one of the largest such ceremonies in history, Pope John
Paul II canonized Padre Pio of Pietrelcina on June 16, 2002. It was the
45th canonization ceremony in Pope John Paul's pontificate. More than 300,000 people braved
blistering heat as they filled St. Peter's Square and nearby streets.
They heard the Holy Father praise the new saint for his prayer and
charity. "This is the most concrete synthesis of Padre Pio's teaching,"
said the pope. He also stressed Padre Pio's witness to the power of
suffering. If accepted with love, the Holy Father stressed, such
suffering can lead to "a privileged path of sanctity." Many people have
turned to the Italian Capuchin Franciscan to intercede with God on
their behalf; among them was the future Pope John Paul II. In 1962,
when he was still an archbishop in Poland, he wrote to Padre Pio and
asked him to pray for a Polish woman with throat cancer. Within two
weeks, she had been cured of her life-threatening disease. Born
Francesco Forgione, Padre Pio grew up in a family of farmers in
southern Italy. Twice (1898-1903 and 1910-17) his father worked in
Jamaica, New York, to provide the family income.
At the age of 15, Francesco joined the Capuchins and
took the name of Pio. He was ordained in 1910 and was drafted during
World War I. After he was discovered to have tuberculosis, he was
discharged. In 1917 he was assigned to the friary in San Giovanni
Rotondo, 75 miles from the city of Bari on the Adriatic. On September
20, 1918, as he was making his thanksgiving after Mass, Padre Pio had a
vision of Jesus. When the vision ended, he had the stigmata in his
hands, feet and side. Life became more complicated after that. Medical
doctors, Church authorities and curiosity seekers came to see Padre
Pio. In 1924 and again in 1931, the authenticity of the stigmata was
questioned; Padre Pio was not permitted to celebrate Mass publicly or
to hear confessions. He did not complain of these decisions, which were
soon reversed. However, he wrote no letters after 1924. His only other
writing, a pamphlet on the agony of Jesus, was done before 1924. Padre
Pio rarely left the friary after he received the stigmata, but busloads
of people soon began coming to see him. Each morning after a 5 a.m.
Mass in a crowded church, he heard confessions until noon. He took a
mid-morning break to bless the sick and all who came to see him. Every
afternoon he also heard confessions. In time his confessional ministry
would take 10 hours a day; penitents had to take a number so that the
situation could be handled. Many of them have said that Padre Pio knew
details of their lives that they had never mentioned. Padre Pio saw
Jesus in all the sick and suffering. At his urging, a fine hospital was
built on nearby Mount Gargano. The idea arose in 1940; a committee
began to collect money. Ground was broken in 1946. Building the
hospital was a technical wonder because of the difficulty of getting
water there and of hauling up the building supplies. This "House for
the Alleviation of Suffering" has 350 beds. A number of people have
reported cures they believe were received through the intercession of
Padre Pio. Those who assisted at his Masses came away edified; several
curiosity seekers were deeply moved. Like St. Francis, Padre Pio
sometimes had his habit torn or cut by souvenir hunters. One of Padre
Pio’s sufferings was that unscrupulous people several times circulated
prophecies that they claimed originated from him. He never made
prophecies about world events and never gave an opinion on matters that
he felt belonged to Church authorities to decide. He died on September
23, 1968, and was beatified in 1999.
St. Constantius
5th century Roman priest who fought against the Pelagians and suffered
at their hands in Rome.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Amos
8:4-7; Psalm 113:1-2, 4-8; 1 Timothy
2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13
Jesus said to his
disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for
squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I
hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you
can no longer be my steward.’ The steward said to himself, ‘What shall
I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from
me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what
I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may
welcome me into their homes.’ He called in his master’s debtors one by
one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He replied,
‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your
promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ Then to
another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied,
‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ The steward said to him, ‘Here is your
promissory note; write one for eighty.’ And the master commended that
dishonest steward for acting prudently. “For the children of this world
are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the
children of light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with
dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into
eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters
is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in
very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you
are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true
wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who
will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters. He will
either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise
the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.” (Luke 16:1-13)
At various times one
comes across persons who have very little commitment to a great cause.
They drift through life more or less just seeking personal
satisfaction. There are others who spend their lives with very worthy
commitments that give to their lives real nobility, even if hidden. The
nature of these
commitments vary enormously. There are some who are moved by the
thought of serving others and building a just society while having
little time for God. Indeed, they can reject God as basically a
distraction from the true work of man in the world. There is, for
example, the classic atheistic communist who, having embraced Marxism,
strove to create what
he regarded as a
classless society while being intolerant of religion as being a harmful
delusion.
That is an extreme, but elements of it can be found in
ordinary secular man who responds to the need to alleviate suffering in
the world and to build a just society, but who is prejudiced
against a religious perspective. But then there is the opposite class
of persons who are moved by the thought of God as the answer to the
aspirations of the heart of man but who have little genuine interest in
the needs of man and society. As we consider the history of the
world and the tapestry of cultures that make up mankind we can perhaps
see evidence of this polarity. I suspect that a case could be made for
thinking that the Eastern religions with their bent towards the
Absolute and away from the world have influenced the slower
material development of their societies. Whatever of that speculation,
there is certainly a difference in emphasis among various currents of
Christianity. There is what we might call the Christian who speaks of
God and Christ and who despises those Christians who speak constantly
of social development. There is also the Christian who speaks of
social, economic and political development and who despises all the
God-talk of the pious. The Church in her teaching of the Christian life
insists on both. We are to love God with all our heart and our
neighbour as ourself, indeed, we are to love our neighbour as Christ
loves us. Our judgment will depend on this.
In our Gospel today
our
Lord tells the story of the steward who is discovered to have
squandered his master’s property (Luke 16:1-13). In the story the same
steward goes on secretly to engage in dishonest accounting in order to
procure for himself the favour of his master’s creditors and so have
friends to help him after his own looming dismissal. Our Lord concludes
by referring to dishonesty. This setting of the parable can remind us
of the Church’s insistence that an essential element of the Christian
life is that the rights of man in society be respected and served. The
Church has, on the one hand, a vast body of teaching about our inner
relationship with and love for Christ. This teaching flows from her
dogmas, the encyclicals of the Popes, the writings of the saints and
the doctors of the Church, and anyone who sets out to attain sanctity
has plenty of approved spiritual guidance at hand. At the same time,
the Church has a very extensive body of social teaching that is
constantly expanding. Almost every Pope since Leo XIII in the
nineteenth century has developed this social teaching and in it the
Christian is able to find authoritative guidance as to his life and
obligations in the world and society. All the Church has done in this
is to unravel in an authoritative way the implications of revelation
for life in society.
The first three of the Ten Commandments set forth our obligations to
God as the foundation of the rest. Then in the next seven commandments
there is revealed what God requires of us in respect to our neighbour,
including our neighbour’s goods. Our Lord time and again insisted on
love for neighbour and respect for his dignity and rights. Our parable
today reminds us that this includes respect for our neighbour’s goods.
This respect for the goods of others is one of the linchpins of the
common good of society and if it is violated, and if a culture in which
the violation of the goods of others becomes accepted, then true
religion breaks down.
For
this reason the Catholic Christian strives to know the
Church’s social teaching. Progressively knowing it, he knows how to
promote respect for man in society. He insists on respect for promises
made and contracts agreed to and the restitution of goods that have
been damaged or taken away. He promotes the payment of just wages, he
promotes a culture that will have nothing to do with fraud and the
evasion of legitimate taxes. He does not accept the abuse of public or
private property, nor work deliberately done poorly, nor waste. He
respects the goods and property of others and of his employers and of
society in general, all as part of respecting the dignity of every man
and woman. He opposes all forms of dishonesty. He takes an interest and
if possible participates in political action and his guiding light is
the Church’s social doctrine, knowing as he does that the Church speaks
in the name of Christ and in her doctrine applies Christ’s
teaching to the life of individuals and societies. Let us then think of
the steward of our Gospel today who squandered and misused his master’s
goods, and resolve to live as a true member of Christ in society and
among men.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no. 2407-2418, 2419-1436.
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We must give ourselves in everything, we must deny ourselves in
everything: the sacrifice must be a holocaust.
(The Way,
no.186)
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From whom did Jesus learn how to pray?
Jesus, with his human heart, learned how to pray from his mother and
from the Jewish tradition. But his prayer sprang from a more secret
source because he is the eternal Son of God who in his holy humanity
offers his perfect filial prayer to his Father. (CCC 2599, 2620)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.541)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Monday of the twenty fifth week in Ordinary Time II
(September
24) Saint
Pacific of San
Severino and Our Lady of Ransom
The story of Our Lady of Ransom
is, at its outset, that of Saint Peter Nolasco, born in Languedoc about
1189. At the age of twenty-five he took a vow of chastity and made over
his vast estates to the Church. After 
making a pilgrimage
to Our Lady of Montserrat, he went to Barcelona where he began to
practice various works of charity. He conceived the idea of
establishing an Order for the redemption of captives seized by the
Moors on the seas and in Spain itself; they were being cruelly
tormented in their African prisons to make them deny their faith. He
spoke of it to the king of Aragon, James I, who knew him well and
already respected him as a Saint; for the king had already asked for
his prayers when he sent out his armies to combat the Moors, and he
attributed his victories to those prayers. In effect all the Christians
of Europe, and above all of Spain, were praying a great deal to obtain
from God the remedy for the great evil that had befallen them. The
divine Will was soon manifested. On the same night, August 1, 1218, the
Blessed Virgin appeared to Saint Peter, to his confessor, Raymund of
Pennafort, and to the king, and through these three servants of God
established a work of the most perfect charity, the redemption of
captives. On that night, while the Church was celebrating the feast of
Saint Peter in Chains, the Virgin Mary came from heaven and appeared
first to Saint Peter, saying that She indeed desired the establishment
of a religious Order bearing the name of Her mercy. Its members would
undertake to deliver Christian captives and offer themselves, if
necessary, as a gage. Word of the miracle soon spread over the entire
kingdom; and on August 10th the king went to the cathedral for a Mass
celebrated by the bishop of Barcelona. Saint Raymund went up into the
pulpit and narrated his vision, with admirable eloquence and fervor.
The king besought the blessing of the bishop for the heaven-sent plan,
and the bishop bestowed the habit on Saint Peter, who emitted the
solemn vow to give himself as a hostage if necessary. The Order, thus
solemnly established in Spain, was approved by Gregory IX under the
name of Our Lady of Mercy. By the grace of God and under the protection
of His Virgin Mother, the Order spread rapidly. Its growth was
increased as the charity and piety of its members was observed; they
very often followed Her directive to give themselves up to voluntary
slavery when necessary, to aid the good work. It was to return thanks
to God and the Blessed Virgin that a feast day was instituted and
observed on September 24th, first in this Order of Our Lady, then
everywhere in Spain and France. It was finally extended to the entire
Church by Innocent XII.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Ezechiel
1:1-6; Psalm 126:1b-2ab, 2cd-3, 4-5,
6; Luke 8:16-18
Jesus said to the
crowd: “No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it
under a bed; rather, he places it on a lamp stand so that those who
enter may see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not
become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to
light. Take care, then, how you hear. To anyone who has, more will be
given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be
taken away.” (Luke 8:16-18)
Just before our
passage today our Lord tells the crowds the parable of the seeds
falling on the ground and having their various results. He concludes by
calling on those who have ears to hear that they listen. In our passage
today, he repeats the point: “Take care how you hear!” When someone is
speaking to us, how are we listening to him? We can listen with love
and attention, or we can listen with disinterest and even hostility.
How we hear makes all the difference. Let us
recall one of the first to hear our Lord after he began his public
ministry. It was Satan. Christ was led by the Holy Spirit into the
desert to be tempted by the Devil. After forty days he was hungry and
Satan entered into conversation with him. Satan listened to Christ but
only with the intention of turning him away from the path of the
Father. Satan wanted to trap him, as did many of the scribes and
Pharisees who also heard what our Lord had to say. On one occasion our
Lord told them that they had the devil for their father. Let us also
recall the great occasion recounted in the sixth chapter of the Gospel
of St John when our Lord publicly told the people in the synagogue of
the Eucharist. He would give to those who believed in him his body and
his blood, and those who ate of him would live forever. How did they
listen to him? Most listened with a spirit of refusal and chose not to
follow him any longer. On that occasion our Lord suffered a great loss
of numbers among his disciples. He turned to the Twelve and asked if
they too were going to leave him - because they had to understand that
his teaching stood. Simon Peter said in reply, Lord to whom shall we
go? We know and believe that your word is eternal life. That is how
Simon and the Apostles listened to our Lord, with full faith in his
word. There was an exception: Judas Iscariot. Our Lord said in reply to
Simon’s words, Have I not chosen you? But one of you is a devil! Simon
Iscariot in some way listened to our Lord with disbelief and hostility,
in a way that placed him in the company of the demons.
“Take care, then,
how you hear. To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one
who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.”
(Luke
8:16-18). We
must listen to the word of Christ with a great readiness of heart to
put it into practice. On one occasion our Lord said, It is not those
who say to me Lord, Lord, who will enter the kingdom of heaven but
those who do the will of my heavenly Father. We must listen with
readiness to put the word of Christ into practice. Our Lord once told a
parable of a master who gave various talents to his servants, each
according to his ability. Their task was to put those talents to work
and increase the wealth of the master. And so he went away. When he
came back the one who had been given one talent gave back the one
talent having not put it to work. He was accused by the master of being
lazy and wicked and that single talent was taken from him and given to
the one who had made the most with his master’s money. The ones who
made more for their master had listened to the instructions of the
master with a readiness to put them into practice. So they were given
more. Their hearts were disposed to accept and obey in faith.
Particularly serious is the case of the person who hears the word of
Christ and simply refuses to believe, as did those in the synagogue at
Capernaum when they heard the doctrine of the Eucharist, and as
presumably did Judas Iscariot. He listened yet did not believe, but
remained in Christ’s company continuing to listen till his catastrophic
betrayal of the Master. In the first instance we must listen to the
word of Christ with the obedience of faith. That word comes to us in
the Scriptures and in the Church’s Tradition, and we must receive it
according to the mind of the Church and not simply according to our own
private and independent judgment. So much depends on how we hear, on
the dispositions with which we listen to the word of Christ.
Let us then place
ourselves in the presence of the living Jesus every day and make his
word the guide of our life. Let us listen humbly and with the
disposition to give to Christ the obedience of our faith and the
readiness to do the will of God in our everyday life. In this way we
shall have, and as one who has, more will be given to us.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Paradox: to live we must die.
(The Way,
no.187)
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When did Jesus pray?
The Gospel often shows Jesus at prayer. We see him draw apart to pray
in solitude, even at night. He prays before the decisive moments of his
mission or that of his apostles. In fact, all his life is a prayer
because he is in a constant communion of love with the Father. (CCC
2600-2604, 2620)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.542)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September 25) Blessed Herman the
Cripple and Saint Finbar
Herman of Reichenau
born 18 February 1013 at Altshausen, Swabia (in modern 
Germany) Died 21
September 1054 at Reichenau abbey of natural causes. Born with a cleft
palate, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida to a farm family. His parents
were unable to care for the child, and in 1020 gave him to the abbey of
Reichenau at age seven; he spent the rest of his life there.
Benedictine monk at age twenty. A genius, he studied and wrote on
astronomy, theology, math, history, poetry, Arabic, Greek, and Latin.
Built musical instruments, and astronomical equipment. Eventually went
blind, and had to give up his academic writing. The most famous
religious poet of his day, and is the author of Salve Regina and Alma
Redemptoris Mater. Beatified 1863 (cultus confirmed).
Saint Finbar was
the son of an artisan and a lady of the Irish royal court. Born in
Connaught, Ireland, and baptized Lochan, he was educated at Kilmacahil,
Kilkenny, where the monks named him Fionnbharr (white head) because of
his light hair. He is also known as Bairre and Barr. On a visit to Rome
the Pope wanted to consecrate him a bishop but Saint Finbar was
deterred by a vision. The legend goes that he notified the pope that
God had reserved that honour to Himself and Saint Finbar was
consecrated from heaven. Whatever of that, he preached in southern
Ireland and lived as a hermit on a small island at Lough Eiroe on the
river Lee. Saint Finbar founded a monastery that developed into the
city of Cork and he was its first bishop. His monastery became famous
in southern Ireland and attracted numerous disciples. Many extravagant
miracles are attributed to him. Supposedly the sun did not set for two
weeks after he died at Cloyne about the year 633. Saint Finbar is the
patron of immigrants.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Ezechiel
6:7-8, 12b, 14-20; Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4ab, 4cd-5;
Luke 8:19-21
The mother of Jesus
and his brothers came to him but were unable to join him because of the
crowd. He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside
and they wish to see you.” He said to them in reply, “My mother and my
brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.” (Luke 8:19-21)
A great deal is
suggested in the brief passage of today’s Gospel. Let us remember that
in every passage of the Gospel we ought preserve a constant
appreciation of the lofty nature of the Person who is at the centre of
the Gospels and of the entire Scriptures. He is Jesus the Messiah, the
Son of God made man. In the first instance he is God, God the Son
through whom all things were made and are sustained, the image of
the unseen God, without
whom no one can come to the Father. This second Person of the Blessed
Trinity became man, truly man just as much as we each of us are, except
that in him there was no sin. Now, the message coming to him from the
midst of the crowds informing him that “your mother and brothers are
standing outside and they wish to see you” reminds us of the profundity
of the Incarnation. The Son of God truly had - and has - a human mother
and human relatives. He did not have brothers and sisters in the sense
of there being other children of his mother for his mother was ever a
virgin, but he had cousins and relatives of other degrees. He grew up
with them under the loving eye of his all-holy mother and they had long
been on easy and intimate terms with him. With the exception of Mary
his mother and Joseph his foster-father how little did they appreciate
his true Person! There in their midst all those years at Nazareth was
the divine Son of the Father, Yahweh God the Son, yet they would have
only perceived that before them was a very good and holy young relative
of theirs. We remember that John the Baptist, his distinguished cousin,
said to Jesus when he presented himself to him for baptism that
he, Jesus, ought to be baptizing him! John the Baptist knew - perhaps
long knew - the great holiness of his slightly younger relative. But he
was yet to learn from God that Jesus was the Messiah, the Lamb of God.
So then, our passage today reminds us of how truly God the Son became
man and immersed himself in our human, family and social situation.
Thus Christ our God
and redeemer is our brother. He is bone of our bone and flesh of our
flesh. But there is a greater and more important family of Jesus to
which he refers in our Gospel passage today. Having been informed that
his mother and his relatives were outside awaiting him, Jesus observed,
“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act
on it.”
(Luke
8:19-21).
The ones who were closest to him, the ones who truly shared his life
and the intimacy of his friendship, the ones who would inherit from him
all his spiritual goods and his grace, were those who strove to hear
the will of God and put it into practice. Christ described himself in
the Gospels as the bridegroom - a word John the Baptist himself uses to
describe our Lord. Not only does this term allude to Christ being the
Yahweh of the Old Testament, but it also emphasizes and exalts the
Church which is the object of his undying and sacrificial love. The
Church is his bride. We are the Church his body and bride, and in our
passage today our Lord calls those who are his disciples his “mother”
and his “brothers.” All these expressions and descriptions show the
place we have in the heart of Christ if we truly endeavour to hear his
word and put it into practice. The one who did this so superbly was his
own mother. Not only is she his mother according to the flesh but she
is his “mother” in the greater and more primary sense he refers to in
our passage today. She is the one par excellence who heard the word of
God and acted on it. We remember the pivotal scene of the Incarnation
in the Gospel of Luke when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to ask
her consent to God’s plan that she be the mother of the Messiah who
would save his people from their sins. “Behold the handmaid of the
Lord” she replied, “Let what you have said be done to me.” She heard
the will of God and having accepted it, put it into practice. She, the
mother of the Lord, is our mother and our model in all that is entailed
in being part of the family of the Lord Jesus.
Let us take to heart our Lord’s
precious words that ought be our stay and our consolation throughout life.
If we persevere in being true disciples of Jesus, hearing the word of God as
it comes to us in the Scriptures and in the preaching and teaching of the
Church, and then resolutely putting it into practice, we shall be brothers
and sisters of Jesus the Son of God and our redeemer.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Remember that the heart is a traitor. Keep it locked with seven
locks.
(The Way,
no.188)
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How did Jesus pray during his passion?
The prayer of Jesus during his agony in the garden of Gethsemani and
his last words on the cross reveal the depth of his filial prayer.
Jesus brings to completion the loving plan of the Father and takes upon
himself all the anguish of humanity and all the petitions and
intercessions of the history of salvation. He presents them to the
Father who accepts them and answers them beyond all hope by raising his
Son from the dead. (CCC 2605-2606, 2620)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.543)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September
26)
Saints Cosmas and Damian, martyrs.
Early
Christian physicians and martyrs. They were twins, born in Arabia, and
practiced the art of healing in the seaport Ægea, now Ayash
(Ajass), on the Gulf of Iskanderun in Cilicia, Asia Minor, and attained
a great reputation. They accepted no pay for their services and were,
therefore, called anargyroi, "the silverless". In this way they brought
many to the Catholic Faith. When the Diocletian persecution began, the
Prefect Lysias had Cosmas and Damian arrested, and ordered them to
recant. They remained constant under torture, in a miraculous manner
suffered no injury from water, fire, air, nor on the cross, and were
finally beheaded with the sword. Their three brothers, Anthimus,
Leontius, and Euprepius died as martyrs with them. The execution took
place September 27, probably in the year 287. At a later date a number
of fables grew up about them, connected in part with their relics. The
remains of the martyrs were buried in the city of Cyrus in Syria; the
Emperor Justinian I (527-565) sumptuously restored the city in their
honour. Having been cured of a dangerous illness by the intercession of
Cosmas and Damian, Justinian, in gratitude for their aid, rebuilt and
adorned their church at Constantinople, and it became a celebrated
place of pilgrimage. At Rome Pope Felix IV (526-530) erected a church
in their honour, the mosaics of which are still among the most valuable
art remains of the city. The Greek Church celebrates the feast of
Saints Cosmas and Damian on July 1, October 17, and November 1, and
venerates three pairs of saints of the same name and profession. Cosmas
and Damian are regarded as the patrons of physicians and surgeons and
are sometimes represented with medical emblems. They are invoked in the
Canon of the Mass and in the Litany of the Saints.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Ezechiel
9:5-9; Tobit 13:2, 3-4a, 4befghn,
7-8; Luke 9:1-6
Jesus summoned the
Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure
diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal
the sick. He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey, neither
walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a
second tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from
there. And as for those who do not welcome you, when you leave that
town, shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.” Then
they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news
and curing diseases everywhere. (Luke 9:1-6)
The feast of Christ
the King which now marks the end of the Liturgical Year was instituted
by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas Primas of December 1925. I have
heard it asserted that this feast has never caught on and that this is
because the notion of kingship is a dated idea in the modern world. But
that is not the point. The notion of Christ as King is a profoundly
Scriptural notion. Pope Pius XI at the time saw the rise of atheistic
communism and secularism as a direct result of man's turning away from
Christ's sovereignty and of the
denial of the authority of Christ's Church. The Gospels are full of the
point that Jesus is the long-awaited universal Sovereign. He is the
Messiah, the anointed King who inaugurated the Kingdom of God. This
Kingdom, which as Pope Benedict has pointed out in his book Jesus of
Nazareth is none other than God’s lordship or rule, is found in and
extended and made available by his Church. Our Gospel scene today
presents us with these great facts in their beginnings. Christ has
appointed the Twelve, the foundation stones of his Church. They are his
principal officers around whom will be grouped his People, the Church.
Their task is to spearhead the Kingdom and to lead Christ’s Church in
its work of making the Kingdom present and available. The Church
built on the Apostles and led by their successors is the bearer of the
Kingdom because it is the bearer of Christ her head and bridegroom. In
him resides the Kingdom and in his Church is to be found full access to
and life in him. So then, when we think of Christ sending out the
Twelve to proclaim the Kingdom we also think ahead to Church and her
mission. To the Twelve and to the infant Church Christ said, Go out to
all the world and make disciples of all the nations. By means of
baptism and by becoming disciples the peoples would enter the Kingdom
of God.
For some time there
has been a common saying in certain currents of theological parlance,
Christ yes, but the Church no! But this cannot be. It is not God’s
plan. Christ sends out the Twelve in our Gospel passage and he
accompanies them in spirit. He invests them with his powers. “Jesus
summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority over all demons
and to cure diseases, and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God
and to heal the sick.” (Luke 9:1-6)
It was a foretaste of
the Church of the risen Jesus empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
On the evening of the day he rose from the dead our Lord appeared to
the Eleven and breathed on them the Holy Spirit giving to them the
mandate he had been given by the Father and also the power to forgive
sins. The Church was being formed in them. After Christ’s ascension the
Twelve together with Mary in their midst as mother and all the Lord’s
disciples were gathered in the upper room awaiting the promised Gift.
Then at Pentecost upon them all together was conferred the Spirit of
God bringing the Church as such to birth in a public sense. Christ is
the Church’s wherewithal and foundation, the Holy Spirit its soul or
animating principle. The Church under the leadership of the Twelve with
Peter at their head brings Christ to the world, Christ who is the
Kingdom of God in person. In Christ God’s lordship is supremely and
perfectly present. So then, as we think of today’s Gospel event let it
remind us that in God’s plan Christ is brought to mankind in and
through his faithful, the Church. The point here is that we should love
the Church as Christ loves her and see in the Twelve of our Gospel
today and their successors the object of Christ’s love and the
instrument of his saving plan. Authentic Christianity involves the
Church and acceptance of Christ means also accepting his body the
Church. The catchcry of “Christ yes and the Church no!” is a travesty
of the plan of God. Rather it is, Christ yes and therefore the Church
yes!
The one who truly
understands the mind of Christ and the plan of God also understands
that the one who belongs to Christ belongs to his Church, which is to
say the Church he founded on the Twelve with Peter at their head. This
Church which Christ in our Gospel scene today was forming for the
future is the depository of the treasures of heaven because it is the
body of Christ here on earth. Let us then love the Church just as we
love Christ.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Anything that does not lead you to God is a hindrance. Root it out
and throw it far from you.
(The Way,
no.189)
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How does Jesus teach us to
pray?
Jesus teaches us to pray not only with the Our Father but also when he
prays. In this way he teaches us, in addition to the content, the
dispositions necessary for every true prayer: purity of heart that
seeks the Kingdom and forgives one’s enemies, bold and filial faith
that goes beyond what we feel and understand, and watchfulness that
protects the disciple from temptation.
(CCC 2608-2614, 2621)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.544)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Thursday
of the twenty fifth week in Ordinary Time II
(September 27) Saint
Vincent De Paul, priest (1576-1660)
Founder of the Lazarist Fathers and the
Daughters of Charity. Saint Vincent was born in 1576 near Dax, south of
Bordeaux, of a poor family which survived by means of their labor. It
seemed that “mercy
was born with him.” When sent by his father to the mill to procure
flour, if he met a poor man coming home, he would open the sack and
give him handfuls of flour when he had nothing else. His Christian
father was not angry; seeing his good dispositions, he was sure his son
should become a priest, and placed him as a boarding student with a
group of religious priests in Dax. Vincent made rapid progress, and
after seven years of studying theology at Toulouse and in Saragossa,
Spain, was ordained a priest in 1600. He always concealed his learning
and followed the counsel of Saint Paul who said, “I have wanted to know
nothing in your midst but Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified.”
Soon after his ordination, he was captured by corsairs and sold as a
slave in Tunisia. He converted his renegade master, and escaped with
him to France. Then, after a time of study in Rome, he returned to
Paris and took for his spiritual director Abbé de Berulle, a
famous director of souls. This servant of God saw in him a priest
called to render outstanding service to the Church, and to found a
community of priests who would labor for its benefit. He told Saint
Vincent this, that he might prepare himself insofar as was humanly
possible. When Saint Vincent was appointed chaplain-general of the
galleys of France, his tender charity brought hope into those prisons
where hitherto despair had reigned. When a mother mourned her
imprisoned son, Vincent put on his chains and took his place at the
oar, and gave him to his mother.
His charity
embraced the poor, the young and the aged, the provinces desolated by
civil war, Christians enslaved by the infidels. The poor man, ignorant
and degraded, was to him the image of Him who became as “a leper and no
man.” “Turn the medal,” he said, “and you will see Jesus Christ.” He
went through the streets of Paris at night, seeking the infants and
children left there to die — three or four hundred every year. Once
robbers rushed upon him, thinking he carried a treasure, but when he
opened his cloak, they recognized him and his burden, an abandoned
infant, and fell at his feet. Not only was Saint Vincent the providence
of the poor, but also of the rich, for he taught them to undertake
works of mercy. When in 1648 the work of the foundlings was in danger
of failure for want of funds, he assembled the ladies of the
Association of Charity, and said, “Compassion and charity have made you
adopt these little creatures as your children. You have been their
mothers according to grace, when their own mothers abandoned them. Will
you now cease to be their mothers? Their life and death are in your
hands. I shall take your votes; it is time to pronounce sentence.” The
tears of the assembly were his only answer, and the work was continued.
The Priests of
the Mission or Lazarists, as they are called, and thousands of the
Daughters of Charity still comfort the afflicted with the charity of
their holy Founder. It has been said of him that no one has ever
verified more perfectly than Saint Vincent, the words of Our Lord: “He
who humbles himself shall be exalted...” The more he strove to abase
himself in the eyes of all, the more God took pleasure in elevating him
and bestowing His blessings on him and on all his works. He died in
1660, in an old age made truly golden by his unceasing good works.
Sources: Les Petits
Bollandistes: Vies
des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris,
1882), Vol. 8; Little
Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s
Lives of the Saints, and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger
Brothers: New York, 1894).
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today: Haggai
1:1-8; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and
9b; Luke 9:7-9
Herod the tetrarch
heard about all that was happening, and he was greatly perplexed
because some were saying, “John has been raised from the dead”; others
were saying, “Elijah has appeared”; still others, “One of the ancient
prophets has arisen.” But Herod said, “John I beheaded. Who then is
this about whom I hear such things?” And he kept trying to see him.
(Luke 9:7-9)
Many people are
interested in religion for a variety of reasons, while of course there
are many who have no interest in religion at all. There are those who
have an academic interest in religion and this kind of interest can be
of various kinds. One person may find religion fascinating in the way
another may find mechanics fascinating. As a discipline it just happens
to arouse his interest. Another is led into it by force of
circumstances: he makes a sudden decision to do his Masters in Buddhism
and this leads him to do his
PhD in an aspect of
Judaism, and so his life’s work is set. He spends the rest of his
working life studying the religions of man, including Christianity. It
is his job as a teacher and researcher. But it does not move him to be
religious himself. Another may have a professional background in
Ancient History and this leads to an interest in the origins of
Christianity and in the person of Jesus Christ. But it is just an
academic interest, a form of curiosity and a field of professional
competence. In each of these cases and in others that may be imagined
the figure of Jesus Christ might indeed be of great interest to a
person at one or other stage of his career - perhaps throughout his
career. But what kind of interest is it? In view of just who Jesus
Christ really is, if this is all his interest amounts to such an
interest is scarcely a worthy one. Obviously the danger in reading and
talking about Christ, God and religion is that these ineffable and holy
Objects can be reduced to being simply objects on a par with the things
of life and the world. God and Christ can cease to be regarded as God
and Christ. Christ wants us to consider him. He wants us to do what his
first associates did, namely to “come and see” (John 1), but not in
just any fashion. He expects certain dispositions of heart and
mind.
In our Gospel text
today Herod the tetrarch is referred to. He hears about Jesus, and
elsewhere in the Gospel we even read that there is among the women who
minister to our Lord and the Twelve the wife of one of Herod’s
stewards. Our Gospel passage tells us that Herod “heard about all that
was happening,” implying that a fair bit of news was reaching him about
Jesus. Jesus was very much occupying his thoughts and concerns. He was
asking for more information “Who then is this about whom I hear such
things?” St Luke tells us that “he kept trying to see him”
(Luke 9:7-9).
But Christ would have none of it. Herod wanted to see our Lord, but our
Lord would have nothing to do with him. He referred to Herod on one
occasion as “that fox” and when he was brought before Herod during his
Passion - to Herod’s delight because he had long wanted to see
our Lord - our Lord refused to even speak to him, which at least he did
to Pilate. So it is not enough to be hearing a lot about Jesus, nor is
it enough to be wanting to “see” Jesus in one sense or another. It is
analogous to the dispositions our Lord refers to when he says that it
is not enough to enter the Kingdom of heaven that a person say “Lord,
Lord”. Rather he must do the will of the heavenly Father. Our Lord
expects certain dispositions, dispositions that in fact he found in
many a sinner. We remember another who also wanted to “see” Jesus but
was unable to because of one circumstance: he was too short for the
crowd. It was the chief tax collector Zacchaeus and therefore a man
publicly regarded as a sinner. He ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a
sycamore tree so as to get a good view of Jesus who was to pass that
way. Our Lord stopped, looked up and called to him saying that he was
to dine in his house that day. Zacchaeus had the dispositions to
renounce his sins and become a disciple.
The goal of life is
to “see” Jesus in the fullest sense possible, to see him with the eyes
of faith in this life, and to see him face to face forever in heaven.
God wants us to desire to see him and to shape our lives accordingly.
But this desire to see Christ requires a heart given to God, the heart
of a disciple. Blessed are the pure of heart, our Lord tells us in the
Beatitudes, for they shall see God. Let us so live that our desire to
see God and Christ will be granted.
(E.J.Tyler)
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A soul
whose immediate superior was a rough and irritable type was moved by
God to say: 'Thank you, my God, for this truly divine treasure: where
could I find another who gives a kick for every kindness?'
(The Way,
no.190)
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Why is our prayer efficacious?
Our prayer is efficacious because it is united in faith with the prayer
of Jesus. In him Christian prayer becomes a communion of love with the
Father. In this way we can present our petitions to God and be heard:
“Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). (CCC
2615-2616)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.545)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time II
(September
28) St
Wenceslaus,
martyr (907-930) If saints have been falsely characterized
as "otherworldly," the life of Wenceslaus stands as an example to the
contrary: He stood for Christian values in the midst of the political
intrigues which characterized 10th-century Bohemia. He was born in 907
near Prague, son of the Duke of Bohemia. His saintly grandmother,
Ludmilla, raised him and sought to promote him as ruler of Bohemia in
place of his mother, who favoured the anti-Christian factions. Ludmilla
was eventually murdered, but rival Christian forces were victorious,
and Wenceslaus was able to assume leadership of the government. His
rule was marked by efforts toward unification within Bohemia, support
of the Church and peace-making negotiations with Germany, a policy
which caused him trouble with the anti-Christian opposition. His
brother Boleslav joined in the plotting, and in September of 929
invited Wenceslaus to Alt Bunglou for the celebration of the feast of
Sts. Cosmas and Damian. On the way to Mass, Boleslav attacked his
brother, and in the struggle, Wenceslaus was killed by supporters of
Boleslav. Although his death resulted primarily from political
upheaval, Wenceslaus was hailed as a martyr for the faith, and his tomb
became a pilgrimage shrine. He is hailed as the patron of the Bohemian
people and of former Czechoslovakia. "Good King Wenceslaus" was able to
incarnate his Christianity in a world filled with political unrest.
While we are often victims of violence of a different sort, we can
easily identify with his struggle to bring harmony to society. The call
to become involved in social change and in political activity is
addressed to Christians; the values of the gospel are sorely needed
today. "While recognizing the autonomy of the reality of politics,
Christians who are invited to take up political activity should try to
make their choices consistent with the gospel and, in the framework of
a legitimate plurality, to give both personal and collective witness to
the seriousness of their faith by effective and disinterested service
of men" (Pope Paul VI, A Call to Action, 46).
St Lorenzo Ruiz and
his companions, martyrs. In the 17th century (1633-1637) Lorenzo
Ruiz and his companions shed their blood for Christ in Nagasaki, Japan.
These martyrs were members of the Order of St Dominic. They were nine
priests, two religious, two sisters, and there laymen. Among the latter
was Lorenzo Ruiz, a family man from the Philippines. They abundantly
lowed the missionary seed of Christianity with the example of their
life and death.
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Haggai
2:1-9; Psalm 43:1, 2, 3, 4; Luke 9:18-22
Once when Jesus was
praying in solitude, and the disciples were with him, he asked them,
“Who do the crowds say that I am?” They said in reply, “John the
Baptist; others, Elijah; still others, ‘One of the ancient prophets has
arisen.’” Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter
said in reply, “The Christ of God.” He strictly directed them not to
tell this to anyone. He said, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and
be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be
killed and on the third day be raised.” (Luke 9:18-22)
It is quite
possible to be rather glib about Jesus being the Messiah. We ought
often ponder on and recall the great and emerging prophecies of the Old
Testament reaching back to the very call of Abraham, and indeed beyond
him to the beginnings of human history. The Book of Genesis reveals
that at the fall of man God promised that the seed of the woman would
crush the serpent’s head. In the midst of the sad history of man
there abode a divine promise of victory over
evil. At his call Abraham was given a promise that through him all the
nations would be blessed. And so the great prediction developed and
gradually became more defined. With varying degrees of clarity the
prophets foretold that one was coming who would establish God’s rule
among men. Everything hung on this Anointed one, this Messiah, and the
thought of his coming fired the chosen people of God. Indeed, as Newman
points out at the end of his
Grammar
of Assent,
the Hebrew prophecy of this coming ruler passed beyond the confines of
ancient Israel and floated among various other peoples of the ancient
world. That this great Personage might be actually identified in space
and time was an electrifying possibility, but John the Baptist had
identified Jesus as this person and this was known among some. When
challenged by the scribes and Pharisees our Lord asked them if they
accepted that John’s mission was from God. They refused to answer
because they knew that John had testified to Jesus. Well now, in our
Gospel passage today our Lord asks his disciples what the crowds were
saying of him. They responded that the crowds ranked him among the
prophets. So he asked them who they thought he was and Simon gave
the answer. He was the long-awaited Messiah on whom the entire plan of
God for mankind depended. Our Lord replied that indeed they were right
but that, very importantly, they must not reveal this to others because
of what no one expected, namely that he must suffer and die and then
rise again. He the Messiah had to suffer and to die, something the
crowds would not comprehend.
This was and is
surely the most surprising and distinctive feature of the Messiahship
of Jesus. Who could expect that God would send his Envoy, his Anointed
One, his King, his Redeemer, his very own Son who was God from God and
Light from Light, precisely in order to suffer and to die? What other
great religious figure or founder had the divine mission to do his work
precisely through indescribable sufferings and death? Buddha never
claimed such a mission, nor did Zoroaster, nor did Mahomet. It is the
surprise of human history that God’s plan for man’s redemption was to
be played out in terms of suffering and death. Christ would not fulfil
his work of man’s redemption from sin by military or political success,
nor simply by proposing a great religious path or a key philosophical
or religious system. No, Christ would fulfill his mission of Messiah by
suffering and dying for the sins of the world. He would then rise again
to a new life which he would share with all who approach him in faith
elicited by the proclamation and teaching of the Church - that Church
built on the Apostles. Suffering and self-denial was at the heart of
the mission and the success of Jesus. That was his way, the way marked
out for him by his heavenly Father. The Son of Man had to suffer and so
enter into his glory. This was so totally foreign to what people
expected of the Messiah that he “strictly directed them not to tell
this to anyone. He said, ‘The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be
rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be
killed and on the third day be raised’.”
(Luke
9:18-22) We
ought strive to appreciate the novelty and the centrality of the Cross
in the divine plan. In Christ obedient suffering became an object of
holy choice and indeed a precious means of untold good. In the Letter
to the Hebrews we read that on coming into the world the Son of God
said, here I come to do your will, O God. The distinctive thing was
that he came to do this nailed to the Cross.
Let us understand
very clearly that the path of Christ is the path of suffering, death
and only then of resurrection. Our Lord’s words to his disciples make
it plain that the crowds would not be able to bear such a doctrine. Let
us pray for the grace to appreciate the place of obedience in the midst
of suffering in the plan of God, and how if we wish to be Christ’s
disciples we must accept and embrace the Cross as he did.
(E.J.Tyler)
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Conquer
yourself each day from the very first moment, getting up on the dot, at
a fixed time, without yielding a single minute to laziness.
If, with God's help, you conquer yourself, you will be well ahead for
the rest of the day.
It's so discouraging to find oneself beaten at the first skirmish!
(The Way,
no.191)
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How did the Virgin Mary pray?
Mary’s prayer was characterized by faith and by the generous offering
of her whole being to God. The Mother of Jesus is also the new Eve, the
“Mother of all the living”. She prays to Jesus for the needs of all
people. (CCC 2617, 2618, 2622, 2674, 2679)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.546)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels
Saturday of the twenty fifth week of Ordinary Time II
(September
29)
Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels
Michael, Gabriel and Raphael Angels—messengers from
God—appear frequently in Scripture, but only Michael, Gabriel and
Raphael are named. Michael appears in Daniel's vision as "the great
prince" who defends Israel against its enemies; in the Book of
Revelation, he leads God's armies to final victory over the forces of
evil. Devotion to Michael is the oldest angelic devotion, rising in the
East in the fourth century. The Church in the West began to observe a
feast honoring Michael and the angels in the fifth century. Gabriel
also makes an appearance in Daniel's visions, announcing Michael's role
in God's plan. His best-known appearance is an encounter with a young
Jewish girl named Mary, who consents to bear the Messiah. Raphael's
activity is confined to the Old Testament story of Tobit. There he
appears to guide Tobit's son Tobiah through a series of fantastic
adventures which lead to a threefold happy ending: Tobiah's marriage to
Sarah, the healing of Tobit's blindness and the restoration of the
family fortune. The memorials of Gabriel (March 24) and Raphael
(October 24) were added to the Roman calendar in 1921. The 1970
revision of the calendar joined their feasts to Michael's.
Each of these archangels performs a different
mission in Scripture: Michael protects; Gabriel announces; Raphael
guides. Earlier belief that inexplicable events were due to the actions
of spiritual beings has given way to a scientific world-view and a
different sense of cause and effect. Yet believers still experience
God's protection, communication and guidance in ways which defy
description. We cannot dismiss angels too lightly. "The question of how
many angels could dance on the point of a pin no longer is absurd in
molecular physics, with its discovery of how broad that point actually
is, and what part invisible electronic 'messengers' play in the dance
of life" (Lewis Mumford).
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture:
Daniel
7:9-10, 13-14 or Revelation
12:7-12ab; Psalm 138:1-5; John 1:47-51
Jesus saw Nathanael
coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true child of Israel.
There is no duplicity in him.” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know
me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw
you under the fig tree.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the
Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to
him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig
tree? You will see greater things than this.” And he said to him,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of
God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:47-51)
There seems to be
an enduring interest in nature documentaries, and with good reason.
They explore the unending variety of species among animals, fish,
insects and plant life. Consider the variety of fish life! Consider the
range of species in the insect world! Nature manifests an astonishing
multiplicity and richness with countless elements
supporting other elements. It all comes from the hand of God who holds
our vast universe in being. But now, this world which we see and which
we are forever discovering is not the only world that there is. God is
not only the creator of all things visible, but the creator of what
could well be just as vast an invisible world, the world of the angels
and Archangels. He is the creator of all things, seen and unseen. It
has been revealed to us in both the Old and New Testaments and by the
word of Christ himself that there is a great and powerful universe of
angels. Indeed, this universe is divided into two great camps. Our Lord
in one of his replies to the scribes and Pharisees refers to the
kingdom and the household of Satan. There is the kingdom of God and
there is the kingdom of Satan. Today, the feast of the Archangels
Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, we think of the angelic world that stands
in the presence of God serving him constantly. In particular, we think
of the Archangels and so we are reminded of the unimaginable variety of
what we might call “kind” among the angels. St Thomas Aquinas teaches
that the angel is his own distinct species because he is not material.
In some way that is difficult to imagine, every angel is a distinct
species. This is accentuated in our thought of the Archangels, those
angelic persons specifically mentioned in the Scriptures who were
entrusted with a mission to man of the first importance. So as we think
of the three Archangels of today let us think of the infinite power and
beauty of God from whom they came.
But as we think of
God and his angelic world with all its beauty and variety, let us
remember that the angels of God are serving him constantly for our
sake. The three Archangels of today, Michael, Raphael and Gabriel,
feature in Scripture as serving the saving work of God on our behalf.
They represent the vast activity going on in heaven for the sake of
man. Consider how great is the sea of human history with its millions
and millions of souls coming into this world and then shortly passing
out of it. The drama of the life of each human soul is the object of
the attention and work of the great battalions of angels who serve the
living God in his plan for man’s redemption. Heaven is at work for the
sake of this world. Our three Archangels of today remind us of this.
The tradition of the Church speaks of angels of churches, nations,
households, individuals. Let us look on this vast service, exemplified
in the Scriptural accounts of Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, as
manifesting the fatherly providence of Almighty God on behalf of his
human family and each member of it. So then, we are not alone in our
struggle against evil and suffering. Think of the great needs of man
and how vulnerable he is to hostile forces in this world and hostile
forces coming from the demonic world. Is he alone in this struggle? No!
The angels and Archangels battle with man silently and invisibly
against the forces of evil and they work to sustain him in his needs.
They do all this out of a holy love and passion for God their loving
Father and Creator. Think of Christ overwhelmed with agony in the
Garden prior to his Passion. He was bearing the sins of the world and
readying himself to expiate for them all. Alone, he sweated blood and
what happened? An angel of the Lord, we read in the Gospel account,
came to console and support him. Christ himself said to Simon Peter
just before he was arrested that were he to ask, his heavenly Father
would send him twelve legions of angels.
The angelic world
is our stay and our ally in our battle to be faithful to God and in our
effort to complete the work which God has given each of us to do. All
this we think of when we think of the three Archangels of today as they
are described in Scripture. Let us look to them for aid and
intercession before God and as our heavenly example inspiring us to
cooperate wholeheartedly with the work of God during life.
(E.J.Tyler)
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You always come out beaten. Propose to yourself, each time, the
salvation of a particular soul, or its sanctification, or its vocation
to the apostolate. If you do so, you are certain of victory.
(The Way,
no.192)
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Is there a prayer of Mary in the
Gospel?
Along with the prayer of Mary at Cana in Galilee, the Gospel gives us
the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) which is the song both of the Mother of
God and of the Church, the joyous thanksgiving that rises from the
hearts of the poor because their hope is met by the fulfilment of the
divine promises. (CCC 2619)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.547)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Prayers this week:
O Lord, you had
just cause to judge men as you did:
because we sinned against you and disobeyed your will.
But now show us your
greatness of heart,
and treat us with your
unbounded kindness.
(Daniel 3)
Father, you show your
almighty power in your mercy and forgiveness.
Continue to fill us with your gifts of love.
Help
us hurry toward the eternal life you promise and come to share in the
joys of your kingdom.
We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(September
30) Saint
Jerome, priest and doctor of the Church (340-420).
Born at Stridon, a town on the confines of Dalmatia and
Pannonia, about the year 340-2; died at Bethlehem, 30 September, 420.
He went to Rome, probably about 360, where he was baptized, and became
interested in 
ecclesiastical
matters. From Rome he went to Trier, famous for its schools, and there
began his theological studies. Later he went to Aquileia, and towards
373 he set out on a journey to the East. He settled first in Antioch,
where he heard Apollinaris of Laodicea, one of the first exegetes of
that time and not yet separated from the Church. From 374-9 Jerome led
an ascetical life in the desert of Chalcis, south-west of Antioch.
Ordained priest at Antioch, he went to Constantinople (380-81), where a
friendship sprang up between him and St. Gregory of Nazianzus. From 382
to August 385 he made another sojourn in Rome, not far from Pope
Damasus. When the latter died (11 December, 384) his position became a
very difficult one. His harsh criticisms had made him bitter enemies,
who tried to ruin him. After a few months he was compelled to leave
Rome. By way of Antioch and Alexandria he reached Bethlehem, in 386. He
settled there in a monastery near a convent founded by two Roman
ladies, Paula and Eustochium, who followed him to Palestine. Henceforth
he led a life of asceticism and study; but even then he was troubled by
controversies which will be mentioned later, one with Rufinus and the
other with the Pelagians.
The
literary activity of St. Jerome, although very prolific, may be summed
up under a few principal heads: works on the Bible; theological
controversies; historical works; various letters; translations. But
perhaps the chronology of his more important writings will enable us to
follow more easily the development of his studies.
A first period extends to his sojourn in Rome (382), a period of
preparation. From this period we have the translation of the homilies
of Origen on Jeremias, Ezechiel, and Isaias (379-81), and about the
same time the translation of the Chronicle of Eusebius; then the "Vita
S. Pauli, prima eremitae" (374-379). A second period extends from his
sojourn in Rome to the beginning of the translation of the Old
Testament from the Hebrew (382-390). During this period the exegetical
vocation of St. Jerome asserted itself under the influence of Pope
Damasus, and took definite shape when the opposition of the
ecclesiastics of Rome compelled the caustic Dalmatian to renounce
ecclesiastical advancement and retire to Bethlehem. In 384 we have the
correction of the Latin version of the Four Gospels; in 385, the
Epistles of St. Paul; in 384, a first revision of the Latin Psalms
according to the accepted text of the Septuagint (Roman Psalter); in
384, the revision of the Latin version of the Book of Job, after the
accepted version of the Septuagint; between 386 and 391 a second
revision of the Latin Psalter, this time according to the text of the
"Hexapla" of Origen (Gallican Psalter, embodied in the Vulgate). It is
doubtful whether he revised the entire version of the Old Testament
according to the Greek of the Septuagint. In 382-383 "Altercatio
Luciferiani et Orthodoxi" and "De perpetua Virginitate B. Mariae;
adversus Helvidium". In 387-388, commentaries on the Epistles to
Philemon, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to Titus; and in 389-390,
on Ecclesiastes.
Between 390 and 405, St. Jerome gave all his attention to the
translation of the Old Testament according to the Hebrew, but this work
alternated with many others. Between 390-394 he translated the Books of
Samuel and of Kings, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Canticle of
Canticles, Esdras, and Paralipomena. In 390 he translated the treatise
"De Spiritu Sancto" of Didymus of Alexandria; in 389-90, he drew up his
"Quaestiones hebraicae in Genesim" and "De interpretatione nominum
hebraicorum." In 391-92 he wrote the "Vita S. Hilarionis", the "Vita
Malchi, monachi captivi", and commentaries on Nahum, Micheas,
Sophonias, Aggeus, Habacuc. In 392-93, "De viris illustribus", and
"Adversus Jovinianum"; in 395, commentaries on Jonas and Abdias; in
398, revision of the remainder of the Latin version of the New
Testament, and about that time commentaries on chapters 13-23 of
Isaias; in 398, an unfinished work "Contra Joannem Hierosolymitanum";
in 401, "Apologeticum adversus Rufinum"; between 403-406, "Contra
Vigilantium"; finally from 398 to 405, completion of the version of the
Old Testament according to the Hebrew. In the last period of his life,
from 405 to 420, St. Jerome took up the series of his commentaries
interrupted for seven years. In 406, he commented on Osee, Joel, Amos,
Zacharias, Malachias; in 408, on Daniel; from 408 to 410, on the
remainder of Isaias; from 410 to 415, on Ezechiel; from 415-420, on
Jeremias. From 401 to 410 date what is left of his sermons; treatises
on St. Mark, homilies on the Psalms, on various subjects, and on the
Gospels; in 415, "Dialogi contra Pelagianos".
Click centre arrow to start video
Scripture today:
Amos 6:1a,
4-7; Psalm 146:7, 8-10; 1 Timothy
6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31
Jesus said to
the
Pharisees: "There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and
fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a
poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten
his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even
used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, he was carried
away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was
buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised
his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried
out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of
his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in
these flames.' Abraham replied, 'My child, remember that you received
what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what
was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent
anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or
from your side to ours.’ He said, 'Then I beg you, father, send him to
my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them,
lest they too come to this place of torment.' But Abraham replied,
'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.' He said,
'Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they
will repent.' Then Abraham said, 'If they will not listen to Moses and
the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise
from the dead.'" (Luke 16:19-31)
There have
been
many teachers of mankind and they are easily remembered. We think of
the great Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. We
think of a few classical Roman writers such as Cicero. We think
of religious figures of great influence such as Zoroaster or Buddha or
Mahomet. We think of Moses and the Hebrew prophets. They each had their
preferred way of expressing their doctrine. Towering above them all in
influence and in sublimity of teaching is Jesus Christ. Our Lord
expresses his doctrine concretely and with imagery, and this is
especially shown in his repeated use of the parable or story. Our
Gospel passage today is a case in point in
which our Lord, not
content simply to direct us to help the poor, tells a story of the rich
man who lacked all concern for the poor man at the very gate of his
home. The rich man “dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined
sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named
Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of
the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even used to come
and lick his sores.” (Luke 16:19-31) There was no excuse
whatever because the poor man was constantly before the rich man at his
very gate. The sight of him was unavoidable and the rich man’s neglect
would have involved a repeated, even a daily hard-heartedness that
silently refused to do anything for the poor man. This was the story of
his life and he passed out of this life unrepentant. That this
deliberate neglect was a horror to God and profoundly offensive to him
is shown in the condemnation of the rich man to hell. When he died he
was buried in hell. Our parable tells us of how important to God is the
poor man and how serious is our responsibility to assist him. So
precious is the poor man to God that when he dies he is taken by the
angels to the intimate friendship of Abraham. Our Lord is not intending
here to set forth the dispositions the poor man needs in order to be
saved. He is just illustrating the simple point that God loves the poor
man and looks on it as a most serious sin to neglect him.
Our Lord’s
teaching
also shows that the true foundations of an ethical concern for those in
need lie in religion. An atheistic or agnostic commitment to the poor
and needy leaves out a consideration that is fundamental. That
consideration is that the dictate of conscience that we assist the poor
is an echo of the voice of God. Furthermore and very importantly,
conscience dictates and God requires that we love and assist not only
the poor at our very gate but all the poor that we can. The setting of
our Lord’s parable is a rich man who has lying at the very gate of his
mansion a poor man who is helpless. But what of a situation in which
the poor man is by no means at the gate of someone’s home, but is out
of sight and far away? The fact is that many in a prosperous country
live in relative comfort and rarely see a poor and desperate person in
the flesh. The poor are not lying prostrate at their gates. They do not
see them every day, nor do they physically pass them by, and because
the poor are out of sight they are very easily out of mind — with the
result that great numbers of the poor are neglected. That is to say
because we are not often coming across poor people ourselves in our
everyday lives we can pass through much of life doing little for them.
But we know full well that there are boundless numbers of the poor in
the world and this fact is borne in on us every day by the media and
the appeals of various bodies, including and especially the Church. And
so just as the rich man of the parable had no excuse because the poor
man Lazarus lay at his very gate where he passed by so very often when
leaving his house, so too due to the media and the efforts of other
bodies of aid we do have these poor, out of sight and perhaps far away,
nevertheless at our very gate as it were. The poor of our country and
our own towns and suburbs whom we may scarcely ever see in daily life
are brought to our attention by the St Vincent de Paul society and by
numerous other organizations who assist them and who are able to help
us assist them. The poor who are so far away in other countries are
brought to our very gates by the daily news and by television.
Furthermore, there are numerous kinds of poor. There are those who are
poor in financial resources. There are those who are poor in health,
those poor in spiritual gifts and resources. Anyone truly in need ought
be the object of our love and help.
Let us take to
heart what is so dear to God, love and service of the poor. The special
danger of those blessed by God with life in a prosperous country is
that they can blithely neglect the poor. Whether at the gate or far
away out of sight, they are precious to the heart of God and as our
Lord teaches in Matthew 25, whatever we do to the poor Christ will
regard as having been done to him. We shall be rewarded or punished
accordingly. Let us then put on the mind of Christ in our love for the
poor.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.2437-2442
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Tender, soft, flabby...: that's not the way I want you. It's about
time you got rid of that peculiar pity you feel for yourself.
(The Way,
no.193)
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How did the first Christian community
in Jerusalem pray?
At the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles it is written that in
the
first community of Jerusalem, educated in the life of prayer by the
Holy Spirit, the faithful “devoted themselves to the teaching of the
apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread, and to
the prayers” (Acts 2:42). (CCC 2623-2624)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.548)
--------------------------------(Back to Liturgical Day Index)--------------------------------