Thursday of the twenty sixth week in Ordinary Time

(October 1) Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Carmelite nun and doctor of the Church (1873-1897)
"I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul." These are the words of Theresa of the Child Jesus, a Carmelite nun called the "Little Flower," who lived a cloistered life of obscurity in the convent of Lisieux, France. [In French-speaking areas, she is known as Thérèse of Lisieux.] And her preference for hidden sacrifice did indeed convert souls. Few saints of God are more popular than this young nun. Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, is read and loved throughout the world. Thérèse Martin entered the convent at the age of 15 and died in 1897 at the age of 24. Life in a Carmelite convent is indeed uneventful and consists mainly of prayer and hard domestic work. But Thérèse possessed that holy insight that redeems the time, however dull that time may be. She saw in quiet suffering redemptive suffering, suffering that was indeed her apostolate. Thérèse said she came to the Carmel convent "to save souls and pray for priests." And shortly before she died, she wrote: "I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth." On October 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church, the third woman to be so recognized in light of her holiness and the influence of her teaching on spirituality in the Church. All her life St. Thérèse suffered from illness. As a young girl she underwent a three-month malady characterized by violent crises, extended delirium and prolonged fainting spells. Afterwards she was ever frail and yet she worked hard in the laundry and refectory of the convent. Psychologically, she endured prolonged periods of darkness when the light of faith seemed all but extinguished. The last year of her life she slowly wasted away from tuberculosis. And yet shortly before her death on September 30 she murmured, "I would not suffer less."  (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:   Nehemiah 8:1-4a, 5-6, 7b-12;    Psalm 19:8-11;    Luke 10:1-12  

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'The kingdom of God is near you.' But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.' I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. (Luke 10: 1-12)

Drama of dramas      Literature is able to capture human drama, and this drama has varied with the times. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar has a scene in which Caesar is solemnly warned to beware the Ides of March. So much hung in the balance for the Republic, for the liberty of the Senate and for the future of Rome. The day came, and in a meeting of the Senate, Caesar fell. All kinds of drama have featured in human history — I speak now not of drama as a genre of literature, but of that drama that is the stage of human history. We may think of the rise of Cromwell and the execution of King Charles. We may think of the attack on Vienna by the Islamic forces in July 1682, and of how so much hung in the balance, resolved in the great defeat of the Islamic armies by Sobieski. We may think of the drama of anti-Christian rationalism in eighteenth century France and its eruption in the French Revolution. Amid the Terror and the cutting down of the Church, the goddess Reason, represented by an actress, was worshipped in Paris’s Cathedral and the Convention decreed the religion of Reason as the religion of France. We may think of the drama of the Russian Revolution more than a century later and the triumph of atheistic communism. There have been so many dramatic moments with awesome consequences. But there is a greater drama still. The stream of human history proceeds like, we might say, a mighty Amazon. Onward it flows, but it is not just a vast, moving mass. Every little thing within it is engaged in its own great drama. Every life has a unique significance. Man is not just a number, not just an unimportant part of a mass. He is an individual involved in a contest with eternal consequences. What is the drama of dramas — the conflict that is, as we might say, the mother of all conflicts? It is the acceptance or otherwise of God and his will. Amid the astonishing variety characterising human life, this is one thing all mankind has in common. Hanging in the balance of every human life is the acceptance of God and his holy will. This is the drama of dramas.

In our Gospel passage today our Lord sends his disciples out two by two — there were seventy-two of them — to go ahead of him. We sense the urgency of the task. “Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.” All that matters is that people hear and accept in faith and repentance the news of the Kingdom, the Kingdom of God that has come in the person of Jesus. For Christ’s disciples, the drama includes their proclamation of this event. For those to whom Christ’s disciples are sent, the drama involves their acceptance or otherwise of it. Will Jesus Christ be recognized for who he really is, the Saviour of the world, the Son of God become truly man, man’s brother and his Lord and God? There is no drama in human history that compares with this, for eternity is at stake. Consider what our Lord says of the rejection of this message. “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'The kingdom of God is near you.' But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.' I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town” (Luke 10: 1-12). The disciple of Christ, the member of Christ’s Church, and the entire Church herself, have a solemn responsibility to bear witness in life and word to the person and message of Jesus Christ. If this responsibility is not fulfilled in everyday life, then the drama has had a tragic issue. For its part, the world has a solemn responsibility to hear this word, to receive it and to put it into practice. If this responsibility to hear and accept the word of Christ is not fulfilled, then again, the drama has had a tragic issue. The words of our Lord ought ring in our ears. We must not take them lightly. “Be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near. I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.”

There are basic and simple facts that every person must keep constantly before him. There is a God. We depend on him constantly. He has become one of us to save us from our sins and to bring us to eternal glory. We must hear his word, and his word comes to us in various ways but supremely in his Son Jesus Christ, conveyed and proclaimed by his Church. Let us understand the drama of dramas in our life, which is to hear the word of God and to put it into practice.
                                                                                    (E.J.Tyler)

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'Did our hearts not burn within us as he talked to us on the road?'

If you are an apostle, these words of the disciples of Emmaus should rise spontaneously to the lips of your professional companions when they meet you along the ways of their lives.
                                                                        (The Way, no.917)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Thirty-Eighth Chapter   THE RIGHT ORDERING OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS; RECOURSE TO GOD IN DANGERS

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

If, likewise, in every happening you are not content simply with outward appearances, if you do not regard with carnal eyes things which you see and hear, but whatever be the affair, enter with Moses into the tabernacle to ask advice of the Lord, you will sometimes hear the divine answer and return instructed in many things present and to come. For Moses always had recourse to the tabernacle for the solution of doubts and questions, and fled to prayer for support in dangers and the evil deeds of men. So you also should take refuge in the secret chamber of your heart, begging earnestly for divine aid.
                                                                  (Continuing)

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Supposing there be otherwise good reason for saying that the Papal Supremacy is part of Christianity, there is nothing in the early history of the Church to contradict it.

          JHN, from An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845)

 

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The Guardian Angels

(October 2) The Guardian Angels
Perhaps no aspect of Catholic piety is as comforting to parents as the belief that an angel protects their little ones from dangers real and imagined. Yet guardian angels are not just for children. Their role is to represent individuals before God, to watch over them always, to aid their prayer and to present their souls to God at death. The concept of an angel assigned to guide and nurture each human being is a development of Catholic doctrine and piety based on Scripture Matthew 18:10 indicates this teaching: "See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father." Devotion to the angels began to develop with the birth of the monastic tradition. St. Benedict (July 11) gave it impetus and Bernard of Clairvaux (August 20), the great 12th-century reformer, was such an eloquent spokesman for the guardian angels that angelic devotion assumed its current form in his day. A feast in honour of the guardian angels was first observed in the 16th century. In 1615, Pope Paul V added it to the Roman calendar.
"May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs come to welcome you and take you to the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem." (Rite for Christian Burial) (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Baruch 1:15-22; Psalm 79:1b-5, 8, 9; Matthew 18:1-5, 10 

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. (Matthew 18: 1-5, 10)

Guardian Angel    There are many ways of looking at and interpreting human history. For instance, one obvious theme taken up by some thinkers is that of conflict. It is common experience that conflict characterises much of human life — be it the life of families, the life of communities, the life of nations, the life of the world. The German philosopher Hegel proposed conflict as the key to human history. He saw in history the recurring pattern of the existing situation or idea being challenged by its opposite, and the conflict resolving in a new situation or idea which then calls forth its opposite. Thus the pattern of conflict recurs. Karl Marx took up the idea and in his work, Das Kapital (1848) applied it to history in his own way, seeing economic forces as fundamental. The ultimate resolution of the recurring conflict among classes of society was to be a classless society of the proletariat. The trouble with any idea that places some law or pattern at the heart of history is that the role of free persons can be lost sight of. Be that as it may, another way of looking at history is to consider it as the rise and fall of kingdoms and regimes. Indeed, this perspective appears prominently in Sacred Scripture. Consider the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, and in particular his visions of the four kingdoms (chapter 7). One kingdom rises, then it falls under pressure of another kingdom. History culminates in the coming on the clouds of heaven One like a son of man. To him is given the everlasting kingdom. Consider the vision of the Ram and the He-Goat of chapter 8. It is a vision of human history and the rise and fall of kingdoms is central to the vision. Well then, as we think of many of the kings and the kingdoms of recorded history — say, Alexander the Great and his successors, Julius Caesar and Octavian and their successors, right through to say, Bonaparte, and the dictators of the twentieth century — what is it that marks the rule of so many (though not all, of course)? It is pride, self-exaltation and a large dose of cruelty. The desire to be great has driven much of history.

The Christian revelation has declared that the final and ultimate Kingdom has already arrived. It is now with us, though not apparent in its glory. The one whom Daniel predicted has come. To him has been given the kingdom that shall never end, and that kingdom is present in the Church which he founded. He, the king, is Jesus Christ, present in his body the Church, and is constantly accessible in and through his Church. But while the kingdoms and regimes of the world which rise and fall and come and go are driven by the desire to be great, the eternal King is marked by the opposite. Those in his kingdom are called to be humble. Let us listen once again to our Lord’s words: “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18: 1-5, 10). The quest of life, then, for someone who a citizen of the eternal kingdom and who follows the eternal King is not power, self-exaltation and any domination over others, but Christ-like service and humility. His goal is to be like his King who came not to be served like the other kings of the earth but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for the many. Today, the memorial of the guardian angels, we are reminded that we have heavenly friends to help us to be like our King and to promote his Kingdom. The Church teaches that God has assigned his angels to aid us in following Christ who is our King. We have an angel of heaven to guide and to guard us along our way of service and humility, building up the Kingdom of Christ and assisting in its triumph of love. Our Lord refers to our guardian angels in our Gospel text today: “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” May I suggest that every day we pray to our guardian angel, asking for his aid in the great work of following the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Angel of God, my guardian dear! To whom God’s love commits me here! Ever this day be at my side, to light and to guard, to rule and to guide. Amen. Why not give to your guardian angel a name so that you readily address him in prayer. We read in the Gospel that at the end of our Lord’s encounter with Satan in the wilderness on the threshold of his public ministry, the angels came and ministered to him. We also read that during his agony in the Garden at the threshold of his Passion, an angel came to our Lord to comfort and support him. We have, each of us, an angel to guard and help us. Let us make of him our friend and use him to help us on the way of the King.
                                                                                     (E.J.Tyler)

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Go to apostolate to give everything, and not to seek any earthly reward.
                                                                                           (The Way, no.918)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Thirty-Eighth Chapter    THE RIGHT ORDERING OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS; RECOURSE TO GOD IN DANGERS

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

For this reason, as we read, Joshua and the children of Israel were deceived by the Gibeonites because they did not first seek counsel of the Lord, but trusted too much in fair words and hence were deceived by false piety.
                                                                        (Concluded)

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Each part of the Catholic Church has excellences of its own which other parts have not, and is as distinct from the rest in genius and in temper as it is in place.

                 JHN, from the sermon ‘The Tree beside the Waters’ (1859)

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Saturday of the twenty sixth week in Ordinary Time

(October 3) St. Mother Theodore Guérin (1798-1856)
     Trust in God’s Providence enabled Mother Theodore to leave her homeland, sail halfway around the world and to found a new religious congregation. Born in Etables, France, Anne-Thérèse’s life was shattered by her father’s murder when she was 15. For several years she cared for her mother and younger sister. She entered the Sisters of Providence in 1823, taking the name Sister St. Theodore. An illness during novitiate left her with lifelong fragile health; that did not keep her from becoming an accomplished teacher. At the invitation of the bishop of Vincennes, she and five sisters were sent in 1840 to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, to teach and to care for the sick poor. She was to establish a motherhouse and novitiate. Only later did she learn that her French superiors had already decided the sisters in the United States should form a new religious congregation under her leadership. She and her community persevered despite fires, crop failures, prejudice against Catholic women religious, misunderstandings and separation from their original religious congregation. She once told her sisters, “Have confidence in the Providence that so far has never failed us. The way is not yet clear. Grope along slowly. Do not press matters; be patient, be trustful.” Another time, she asked, “With Jesus, what shall we have to fear?” She is buried in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, and was beatified in 1998. Eight years later she was canonized.
    During his homily at the beatification Mass, Pope John Paul II said that Blessed Mother Theodore “continues to teach Christians to abandon themselves to the providence of our heavenly Father and to be totally committed to doing what pleases him. The life of Blessed Theodore Guérin is a testimony that everything is possible with God and for God.” (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Baruch 4:5-12, 27-29; Psalm 69:33-37; Luke 10:17-24 

The seventy-two returned with joy and said, Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name. He replied, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No-one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no-one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. (Luke 10: 17-24)

All authority is his      St Paul writes in one of his Letters that five hundred of the disciples saw the risen Jesus on one occasion. This passing information gives us an inkling of the following our Lord had during his public ministry. It is also clear that many followed our Lord with varying degrees of commitment. For instance, the Gospel of St John tells us that when our Lord announced the doctrine of the Eucharist in the synagogue of Capernaum, many of his disciples left him. It is precisely at that point that there is the first reference to the defection of Judas. In our Gospel passage today our Lord sends out six dozen — seventy two — of his disciples to prepare the way ahead of him. We notice that when Luke lists the Twelve (6:14-16), they are listed broadly in pairs. Presumably when the Twelve were sent out they went two by two, so there were six parties of the Apostles sent out on mission in pairs. Here in our Gospel today there were six dozen of his disciples sent out. I wonder whether this figure somehow related to the six teams of Apostles when they were on mission. At least it can remind us of the link in mission between all Christ’s disciples and the Twelve — and their successors. So they went out and discovered the power of the name of Jesus. We read that “The seventy-two returned with joy and said, Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” We do not read of anything like this in the work of the prophets of the Old Testament. They do not invest their disciples with power over the underworld. We even read elsewhere of some of the Twelve encountering a person not of their company — not one of Christ’s disciples — who was using the name of Jesus to cast out demons. Jesus of Nazareth was being seen as a great power for good. Our Lord confirms his power over Satan. “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” he told them. This may refer to his having witnessed Satan being cast out of heaven at the beginning. It may refer to his witnessing in his mind’s eye the present and future work of his disciples combating the demons. It could refer to the very end when God will be all in all.

What matters, though, and what they ought rejoice in, is that their names are written in heaven. This comes from their being Christ’s disciples and from being united with him in his mission. They are beloved of the Father, and the Father has chosen to reveal to them, the little ones, the person and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. We read that “At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.” Then our Lord speaks directly of himself: “All things have been committed to me by my Father.” This is a simple statement but full of momentous significance. Is there any other person in all the Scriptures about whom such a thing is said? It is not said of Abraham, nor of Moses, nor of David, nor of any of the prophets. When in the wilderness at the threshold of his public ministry our Lord had been promised by Satan that he would entrust the world to him provided he, Jesus, worshipped him. Our Lord told Satan to be gone. Here our Lord tells his disciples that all things has been entrusted to him by the Father. The kingdom of heaven was his. He was the King of kings and the Lord of lords. When our Lord rose from the dead he said to his disciples that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. They were to go, then, to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations. Here the seventy-two — representing, we might say, the body of our Lord’s disciples — are being introduced to the Church’s mission. Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of all that was promised and expected. “No-one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no-one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. (Luke 10: 17-24)

In Christ, St Paul writes, is found every heavenly blessing. In him dwells the fulness of the godhead bodily. If we wish to plumb the depths of the universe and attain its key, all this will be found in a specific person, the person of Jesus Christ. In encountering him we encounter the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Final, the Deepest. We reach our term in him and there is no further to go when we gain him. The one thing that matters is to know Christ Jesus and become his friend and disciple. This great blessing is granted by the Father, and he grants it not to those who deem themselves wise and clever, but to little children. Let us pray for this blessing, then!
                                                                    (E.J.Tyler)

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By calling you to be an apostle, our Lord has reminded you, so that you will never forget it, that you are a 'son of God.'
                                                              (The Way, 919)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Thirty-Ninth Chapter     A MAN SHOULD NOT BE UNDULY SOLICITOUS ABOUT HIS AFFAIRS

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, always commit your cause to Me. I will dispose of it rightly in good time. Await My ordering of it and it will be to your advantage.

THE DISCIPLE

Lord, I willingly commit all things to You, for my anxiety can profit me little. But I would that I were not so concerned about the future, and instead offered myself without hesitation to Your good pleasure.

                                                    (Continuing)

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Civilization is that state to which man’s nature points and tends; it is the systematic use, improvement, and combination of those faculties which are his characteristic; and, viewed in its idea, it is the perfection, the happiness of our mortal state.

                          JHN, from Lectures on the History of the Turks in their Relation to Europe (1853)

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Scripture today: Jonah 1:1-2:2, 11; Jonah 2:3, 4, 5, 8; Luke 10:25-37

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the Law? he replied. How do you read it? He answered: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbour? In reply Jesus said: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, Go and do likewise. (Luke 10: 25-37)

What man must do    There are many things that are very distinctive about that body of ancient writing which we call the Old Testament, apart from its being the inspired record of supernatural revelation. If we set it next to, say, the works of Plato or Aristotle, one obvious feature about it is its distinctive concern for right and holy living: what man must do in order to please God and gain life. But there is another feature which is closely aligned to this, and that is its need for interpretation. Any body of writing needs to be interpreted, but the order and structure of the Old Testament presents special challenges. It is made up of a wide variety of literary genres from different eras and settings, all in one way or another setting forth what God had done and said, and what man must do in response. A fundamental order in respect to what man must do is offered in the Ten Commandments of the book of Exodus. But, for instance, the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy contain numerous prescriptions of varied importance, chapter after chapter. The prophets condemn sins of different kinds and uphold the range of God’s laws. The entire Scriptures required interpretation and in fact what characterized the life of the chosen people were the markedly distinct interpretations of the Scriptures propounded by the Pharisees, the Sadducees and others besides. One aspect of Christ’s mission was to reveal the true meaning of the Scriptures in the midst of this plethora. The New Testament, in setting forth the mystery and person of Jesus Christ, was laying down the definitive meaning of the Scriptures and pronouncing on the value of other interpretations. God’s revelation was being given its true meaning and this was itself a revelation from on high in the person and teaching of Jesus Christ. We see this process being played out on a smaller scale in our Gospel today, yet in a way that is immensely illuminating. A teacher and expert in the law rises to test Jesus. He asks him a fundamental question requiring a knowledge of the Scriptures that pinpointed its heart and soul.

That question was, what must I do to gain eternal life  (Luke 10: 25-37)? It is the question of questions, and it is precisely this that sets the Hebrew Scriptures so much above the literature of ancient times. The answer was not difficult. When our Lord asked his questioner to answer from the Law, the lawyer had no difficulty in replying. He immediately cited two sentences from the Old Testament. The first was from Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 5, and it gave the most magnificent statement of man’s vocation in ancient literature: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Therefore you shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. We may notice that the lawyer adds, and with all your mind. The lawyer may have been forgetting the implication of loving God with all your mind. Loving God with all our minds involves striving to know him and his will as perfectly as possible. We remember that on one occasion our Lord told the Sadducees that they understood neither the meaning of the Scriptures nor the power of God, and that they were very much mistaken. He was continually telling the scribes and the Pharisees that in their opposition to him — such as in the interpretation of the Sabbath — they were very much mistaken. It is not enough to love God with all our heart, our soul and all our strength if, in fact, we are in error about him and his will, when the truth of the matter is available to us. God wants us to be right in our understanding of what he has revealed, and of course it is for this very purpose that he has bestowed on us his revelation. This light of understanding comes in the person of Jesus Christ. The lawyer completes his answer by citing another key sentence in the Old Testament, from Leviticus, chapter 19:18. You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Our Lord confirms what the lawyer has said, and in response to a further query proceeds to tell his famous parable of the Good Samaritan — a heretic in religious belief and a foreigner, but who outshines the priest and the Levite in his love for his neighbour in need.

It is love for God in practical action which our Lord highlights in his answer to the lawyer. The lawyer knew the answer to his own question — he was attempting to test and trap Jesus. Our Lord uses the occasion to place at the forefront of divine revelation the imperative of helping our brother in need. As our Lord will explain elsewhere (Matthew 25), at the Last Judgment we shall be judged on whether we have been like the Good Samaritan. Our Lord himself is supremely the Good Samaritan for the entire human race. Let us strive to be like him, then!
                                                                           (E.J.Tyler)

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You are salt, apostolic soul. 'Salt is a useful thing', we read in the holy Gospel; but if the salt loses its taste, it is good for nothing, neither for the land nor for the manure heap; it is thrown out as useless.

You are salt, apostolic soul. But if you lose your taste...
                                                              (The Way, no.921)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Thirty-Ninth Chapter    A MAN SHOULD NOT BE UNDULY SOLICITOUS ABOUT HIS AFFAIRS

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

A man's true progress consists in denying himself, and the man who has denied himself is truly free and secure. The old enemy, however, setting himself against all good, never ceases to tempt them, but day and night plots dangerous snares to cast the unwary into the net of deceit. "Watch ye and pray," says the Lord, "that ye enter not into temptation."
                                                        (Concluded)

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Though Faith is the characteristic of the Gospel, and Faith is the simple lifting of the mind to the Unseen God, without conscious reasoning or formal argument, still the mind may be allowably, nay, religiously engaged, in reflecting upon its own Faith; investigating the grounds and the Object of it, bringing it out into words, whether to defend, or recommend, or teach it to others.

                                JHN, from the university Sermon ‘Implicit and Explicit Reason’ (1840)

Tuesday of the twenty seventh week in Ordinary Time

(October 6) St. Bruno (1030?-1101)
    This saint has the honour of having founded a religious order which, as the saying goes, has never had to be reformed because it was never deformed. No doubt both the founder and the members would reject such high praise, but it is an indication of the saint's intense love of a penitential life in solitude. He was born in Cologne, Germany, became a famous teacher at Rheims and was appointed chancellor of the archdiocese at the age of 45. He supported Pope Gregory VII (May 25) in his fight against the decadence of the clergy and took part in the removal of his own scandalous archbishop, Manasses. Bruno suffered the plundering of his house for his pains. He had a dream of living in solitude and prayer, and persuaded a few friends to join him in a hermitage. After a while he felt the place unsuitable and, through a friend, was given some land which was to become famous for his foundation "in the Chartreuse" (from which comes the word Carthusians). The climate, desert, mountainous terrain and inaccessibility guaranteed silence, poverty and small numbers. Bruno and his friends built an oratory with small individual cells at a distance from each other. They met for Matins and Vespers each day, and spent the rest of the time in solitude, eating together only on great feasts. Their chief work was copying manuscripts. The pope, hearing of Bruno's holiness, called for his assistance in Rome. When the pope had to flee Rome, Bruno pulled up stakes again, and spent his last years (after refusing a bishopric) in the wilderness of Calabria. He was never formally canonized, because the Carthusians were averse to all occasions of publicity. Pope Clement extended his feast to the whole Church in 1674.
    “Members of those communities which are totally dedicated to contemplation give themselves to God alone in solitude and silence and through constant prayer and ready penance. No matter how urgent may be the needs of the active apostolate, such communities will always have a distinguished part to play in Christ's Mystical Body...” (Decree on the Renewal of Religious Life, 7) (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today:   Jonah 3:1-10;   Psalm 130:1b-2, 3-4ab, 7-8;   Luke 10:38-42

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me! Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:38-42)

Being busy     I know of an outstanding two volume life of Christ (entitled The Mystery of Jesus) which, in its treatment of this Gospel passage today, places Mary the sister of Martha at the centre of the scene. Yes, Mary’s action of sitting at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said is held up as more important than being worried and upset about many other things, such as the serving. But the focus is surely on Martha. Decades after the event the scene was recorded by Luke for the sake of the Church. In the Gospel of St John, Martha and Mary together with their brother Lazarus have an entire chapter devoted to them, and in it Martha’s example of faith in our Lord is an instance of the faith that the Gospel is designed to produce. Martha professed before Jesus that he was the Messiah and the Son of God, and this profession was followed by Christ’s raising of her brother Lazarus from the dead. Luke also knew of Martha, and in our scene today it is she who welcomes Jesus into her home. She takes the initiative in giving this welcome, and showers upon him the service she desires to give to him. We read elsewhere in the Gospel that the apostolic band with Jesus at their centre was, in their travelling, assisted by some women who supported them out of their means and attended to what was needed. Martha was of this stamp. She loved our Lord, recognized him for who he was, and wished to serve him with all her heart. We ought also remember that Martha is celebrated in the Church’s Liturgical Year as a saint. The Evangelist, in presenting her loving service to the Christian reader, wished also to record a correction our Lord was remembered to have given. Do not get distracted away from Christ by all the business that is part and parcel of serving him in the life of the Church. Martha was an image of the one who serves Christ and his Church. This work of service can lead to irritation, anxiety and even annoyance with others. The one thing necessary can, on occasion, be forgotten.

What is the one thing necessary which the Christian must always be doing? It is to have one’s heart focussed on the person of Jesus and to be listening to his word with the desire to put it into practice. On another occasion in the Gospel our Lord was teaching a group of disciples before a crowd, and word came through that his mother and his relatives were outside desirous of seeing him. His response was to point to the ones before him and say, here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of my Father is my mother and my sister and my brother. What matters to our Lord is that we listen to him in love with the resolve to put his word into practice. We remember how, at the beginning of his public ministry, our Lord and his disciples attended the wedding feast of Cana where the wine ran out. Mary the mother of Jesus, having informed her son that the wine had run out, told the servants to do whatever he tells them. The changing of the water into wine followed, but the words of Mary are what is important. The Christian must listen to Christ and do whatever he says. On another occasion our Lord, using the example of building a house, said that it is the man who hears his words and puts them into practice who is building on rock. In our Gospel scene today (Luke 10:38-42) Mary’s action is held up before Martha — Martha, the example of loving welcome and service of Christ — as something she must always remember. Do not get lost in the service of Christ to the point of partially forgetting Christ himself. The one thing necessary and which Christ himself desires, is that we keep the attention of our hearts on him and on his will. In the particular circumstance of our Gospel passage today, it is this which, Mary the sister of Martha, was doing. Our Lord wishes Martha to take advantage of Mary’s example, and Luke holds it up for the benefit of all of Christ’s faithful. Perhaps Luke saw this event as particularly instructive for him and his companions who were so much part of the grand and very busy missionary enterprise of St Paul.

Let us who are followers of Jesus Christ every day keep before our minds our primary ambition. It is to love Jesus with all our heart, for he is our Redeemer and our God. We must not let our work of serving Jesus with its possible distraction, worry and irritation cloud our hearts and diminish his presence in our souls. The cares of life can distract us away. Rather, in the midst of these cares, the one thing necessary is that we keep our mind, our heart and our soul focussed on Jesus. This requires a regime of prayer, spiritual reading, sacraments and general recollection. We must be contemplative in action and be persons whose vision is ever on Christ, whatever be our particular calling.
                                                                                     (E.J.Tyler)

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My son, if you love your apostolate, be certain that you love God.
                                                                    (The Way, no.922)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fortieth Chapter    MAN HAS NO GOOD IN HIMSELF AND CAN GLORY IN NOTHING

THE DISCIPLE

LORD, what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You visit him? What has man deserved that You should give him Your grace? What cause have I, Lord, to complain if You desert me, or what objection can I have if You do not do what I ask? This I may think and say in all truth: "Lord, I am nothing, of myself I have nothing that is good; I am lacking in all things, and I am ever tending toward nothing. And unless I have Your help and am inwardly strengthened by You, I become quite lukewarm and lax."
                                                                         (Continuing)

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Let us be far more set upon alluring souls into the right way than on forbidding them the wrong.

         JHN, from the sermon ‘The Fellowship of the Apostles’ (1839)

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Wednesday of the twenty seventh week in Ordinary Time

(October 7) Our Lady of the Rosary
   Pope St. Pius V established this feast in 1573. The purpose was to thank God for the victory of Christians over the Turks at Lepanto — a victory attributed to the praying of the rosary. Clement XI extended the feast to the universal Church in 1716. The development of the rosary has a long history. First, a practice developed of praying 150 Our Fathers in imitation of the 150 Psalms. Then there was a parallel practice of praying 150 Hail Marys. Soon a mystery of Jesus' life was attached to each Hail Mary. Though Mary's giving the rosary to St. Dominic is recognized as a legend, the development of this prayer form owes much to the followers of St. Dominic. One of them, Alan de la Roche, was known as "the apostle of the rosary." He founded the first Confraternity of the Rosary in the 15th century. In the 16th century the rosary was developed to its present form — with the 15 mysteries (joyful, luminous and glorious). In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the five Mysteries of Light to this devotion.
   “The rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at a heart a Christ-centred prayer. It has all the depth of the gospel message in its entirety. It is an echo of the prayer of Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation which began in her virginal womb...It can be said that the rosary is, in some sense, a prayer-commentary on the final chapter of the Vatican II Constitution Lumen Gentium, a chapter that discusses the wondrous presence of the Mother of God in the mystery of Christ and the Church" (Pope John Paul II, apostolic letter The Rosary of the Virgin Mary). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Jonah 4:1-11; Psalm 86:3-6, 9-10; Luke 11:1-4

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples. He said to them, When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.' (Luke 11: 1-4)

Our Father!    Many things that Jesus said and did caused mounting hostility towards him on the part of the leaders of the Jews. There was his observance of and pronouncements on the Sabbath. There were his utterances on the traditions of the elders. Above and beyond all, there was his attitude to Yahweh God and, consequently, his claims about himself. God was his very own father, in an absolutely unique sense. We read in the Gospel of St John that on one occasion the “Jews” — which is to say some of the leaders of the Jews — took up stones with which to stone him because he claimed that God was his father. They grasped the point exactly and correctly: his claim implied that he himself was equal to God, for as God’s own son he must share with God the divine nature. “I and the Father are one,” he said elsewhere. “Before Abraham ever was, I am.” “He who sees me sees the Father.” No prophet of God’s chosen people had spoken like this. It is in this context that we must consider the prayer which the Lord taught his disciples, and which in shorter form is given to us by St Luke in our Gospel today. It begins most significantly. It addresses God as Father! St Matthew’s version gives the fuller expression of it: our Father! St Paul writes that in the Spirit we address God as Abba! Father! In turning to God we say, Father — dear, dear Father! So it is that among the many distinctive features of the Christian religion is to be counted the character of its prayer. The Christian regards the most high God as his Father — not his Father by nature as does Christ, but by virtue of an “adoption.” God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and because of his death and resurrection the baptized Christian is granted the grace of a share in Christ’s divine sonship. We are not God’s natural children who possess by nature his divine life. Rather, we have been granted a share in the divine life by the gift of grace making us adopted children of God. Christ is the second divine person made man and is the Father's natural and only begotten son.

This is not allowed by our Jewish brethren. For them, God is Father and Husband to his chosen people by special choice, ratified by the covenant of Moses and spelt out by the prophets. So God is indeed very close to his people. But for those who are privileged to be members of this people there is no question of a sharing in the very life of God. We remain his creatures and nothing more by nature. Such is the revealed monotheism of Judaism and within that tradition one could not pray the Lord’s prayer as Christ meant it. Islam will not have it that Allah, the one and only God, is Father and Husband to a chosen people. God, the Lord of Mercy and of the Worlds, Master of Judgment, is the One man worships. He is great and he is beyond. This, of course, is manifestly a different teaching on the one God from that of Moses and the Prophets. But far more so does it differ from that of Jesus Christ. Mahomet absolutely rejects that Allah could have a natural divine Son, who — to crown all — became man and even died on a cross, rising then in glory as man again! For Islam this contradicts monotheism. All this shows the ineffable and wondrously distinct character of the Christian revelation, and therefore of Christian prayer. In Christ, God has granted a revelation of himself that is far beyond what nature and man's natural powers will suggest. The most exalted conceptions of God will not attain to it. The Christian, because of the gift of grace, is an adopted child of God enjoying a share in his divine life. He is thus empowered to address God as his father — not, of course, in the unique and natural sense in which Christ does, but by the special gift of being “adopted” by God. This gift of adoption is granted at baptism and involves a new birth in the soul. As St Paul writes, this new birth makes of the Christian a new creature able to call God his Father: Abba, dear Father! The prayer of the Christian is different from that of his brother the Jew because the Christian shares in the life of Christ. Far more so is it different from the prayer of Islam.

Let us treasure the Lord’s prayer, always praying it with the doctrine of God revealed by Jesus Christ in mind. The one God in three persons has offered us the grace of being his adopted children. We address the most high God as our Father. Let us live as his children, striving to be like his only-begotten Son. 'Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.' (Luke 11: 1-4)
                                                                        (E.J.Tyler)

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The day you really 'get the feel' of your apostolate, that apostolate will serve you as a shield with which to resist all the attacks of your enemies of this earth and of hell.
                                                                  (The Way, no.923)
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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE       INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fortieth Chapter   MAN HAS NO GOOD IN HIMSELF AND CAN GLORY IN NOTHING

THE DISCIPLE

But You, Lord, are always the same. You remain forever, always good, just, and holy; doing all things rightly, justly, and holily, disposing them wisely. I, however, who am more ready to go backward than forward, do not remain always in one state, for I change with the seasons. Yet my condition quickly improves when it pleases You and when You reach forth Your helping hand. For You alone, without human aid, can help me and strengthen me so greatly that my heart shall no more change but be converted and rest solely in You. Hence, if I knew well how to cast aside all earthly consolation, either to attain devotion or because of the necessity which, in the absence of human solace, compels me to seek You alone, then I could deservedly hope for Your grace and rejoice in the gift of new consolation.
                                                               (Continuing)

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The matter of revelation is not a mere collection of truths, not a philosophical view, not a religious sentiment or spirit, not a special morality,—poured out upon mankind as a stream might pour itself into the sea, mixing with the world’s thought, modifying, purifying, invigorating it;—but an authoritative teaching, which bears witness to itself and keeps itself together as one, in contrast to the assemblage of opinions on all sides of it, and speaks to all men, as being ever and everywhere one and the same, and claiming to be received intelligently, by all whom it addresses, as one doctrine, discipline, and devotion directly given from above.

                                     JHN, from An Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870)

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Friday of the twenty seventh week in Ordinary Time

(October 9) St. Denis and Companions (d. 258?)
    This martyr and patron of France is regarded as the first bishop of Paris. His popularity is due to a series of legends, especially those connecting him with the great abbey church of St. Denis in Paris. He was for a time confused with the writer now called Pseudo-Dionysius. The best hypothesis contends that Denis was sent to Gaul from Rome in the third century and beheaded in the persecution under Valerius in 258. According to one of the legends, after he was martyred on Montmartre (literally, "mountain of martyrs") in Paris, he carried his head to a village northeast of the city. St. Genevieve built a basilica over his tomb at the beginning of the sixth century.
   "Martyrdom is part of the Church's nature since it manifests Christian death in its pure form, as the death of unrestrained faith, which is otherwise hidden in the ambivalence of all human events. Through martyrdom the Church's holiness, instead of remaining purely subjective, achieves by God's grace the visible expression it needs. As early as the second century one who accepted death for the sake of Christian faith or Christian morals was looked on and revered as a 'martus' (witness). The term is scriptural in that Jesus Christ is the 'faithful witness' absolutely (Revelations 1:5; 3:14)" (Karl Rahner, Theological Dictionary). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today:   Joel 1:13-15; 2:1-2;   Psalm 9:2-3, 6 and 16, 8-9;    Luke 11:15-26 

Some people said of Jesus, It is by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that he is driving out demons. Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven. Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebub. Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armour in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters. When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. (Luke 11: 15-26)

Satan       In the Old Testament — the Hebrew Scriptures — we find various references to the good angels. When God expelled Adam from the Garden “he stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24). Angels appear to Abraham. An angel appears to Gideon. The book of Tobit is largely concerned with the guidance given by the angel Raphael to Tobias. The most important revelation about Satan is in the book of Genesis where he engineers the Fall of man. Another important reference to Satan is found in the book of Job, in which he is the initiator of Job’s afflictions. He does not appear much elsewhere. When it comes to the angelic world, it is the angels, the good spirits, who feature much more. Now, the angels have an important place in the New Testament, especially though not exclusively in the narratives of Matthew and Luke about the infancy of Christ. They feature in our Lord’s public ministry, in his passion (in the Garden of Gethsemane) and in the resurrection. But what is especially noteworthy is — at least when set against the Old Testament- the sudden prominence of Satan in the Gospels. In his teaching our Lord refers to Hell and the demonic far often than is found anywhere in the Old Testament. He reveals the prospect of an eternity in Hell for the sinner who does not repent, and it was to save us from the fires of Hell that he became man. Salvation comes from union in faith and baptism with him. Our Lord’s public ministry, beginning with his temporary withdrawal to the wilderness following his baptism, is marked by an encounter with the prince of Hell, Satan. It began a battle to the death. From the outset Christ is in direct conflict with the demons who have in numbers made their abode in the lives of very many unfortunates of God’s chosen people. We do not get the impression that this was wholly the fault of those possessed. We read of a young boy possessed by a demon. One of Christ’s most ardent disciples, Mary Magdalene, had had seven demons cast out of her by him.

Christ’s public ministry was in large measure dominated by his conflict with Satan. Appointing Simon to be the rock of his Church and giving to him the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, Christ promises that the powers of Hell will not prevail. At the Last Supper he spoke to his disciples of his Passion as the moment when the Prince of this world was on his way. In our Gospel today our Lord speaks specifically of Satan’s kingdom. The demonic world, our Lord implies, is organized and well thought through. It is “a kingdom” and “a household,” suggesting a unity and a strategy. “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebub.” The only victor over Satan is Jesus Christ because he is far the stronger. He despoils Satan who has been in possession, and shares out the spoils — and this was the upshot of our Lord’s ministry and death and resurrection. “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armour in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters” (Luke 11: 15-26). Christ warns all to be vigilant. It is not enough to have been freed by God’s power of the influence of this spirit, for this enemy seeks to return. “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first” (Luke 11: 15-26). I remember watching a contest shot on film between a crocodile and a lion. The more nimble lion forced the crocodile away back into the river. But then, becoming distracted, the lion remained on the shore and ceased to be on guard. The crocodile suddenly returned and, rushing from the water, took the lion.

Let us beware, as our first parents did not beware. Their archetypal example has been replicated time and time again in the history of our race. Wellington did not underestimate the genius of Bonaparte as a military commander, but prepared for the final encounter at Waterloo with great care. Were it not for the arrival of Blucher, he would have probably lost. Bonaparte, on the other hand, underestimated Wellington and underperformed. Should we underestimate Satan — and our age tends to regard the demons as a joke — it will lead to a downfall. Let us take our stand with Christ, carrying his banner to victory. That banner is the sign Constantine saw in the skies: it is the Cross. Let us follow Jesus as he carries the cross. That is our weapon, and by it we win.
                                                                       (E.J.Tyler)

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Just as observant religious are eager to know how the first of their order or congregation lived, so as to have their model to follow you too, Christian gentleman, should also seek to know and imitate the lives of the disciples of Jesus, who knew Peter and Paul and John, and all but witnessed the Death and Resurrection of the Master.
                                                              (The Way, no.925)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fortieth Chapter    MAN HAS NO GOOD IN HIMSELF AND CAN GLORY IN NOTHING

THE DISCIPLE

Let Your name, not mine, be praised. Let Your work, not mine, be magnified. Let Your holy name be blessed, but let no human praise be given to me. You are my glory. You are the joy of my heart. In You I will glory and rejoice all the day, and for myself I will glory in nothing but my infirmities.
                                                            (Continuing)

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The body of the faithful is one of the witnesses to the fact of the tradition of revealed doctrine.

                JHN, from ‘On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine’ (1859)

Saturday of the twenty seventh week in Ordinary Time

(October 10) St. Francis Borgia (1510-1572)
Today's saint grew up in an important family in 16th-century Spain, serving in the imperial court and quickly advancing in his career. But a series of events—including the death of his beloved wife—made Francis Borgia rethink his priorities. He gave up public life, gave away his possessions and joined the new and little-known Society of Jesus. Religious life proved to be the right choice. He felt drawn to spend time in seclusion and prayer, but his administrative talents also made him a natural for other tasks. He helped in the establishment of what is now the Gregorian University in Rome. Not long after his ordination he served as political and spiritual adviser to the emperor. In Spain, he founded a dozen colleges. At 55, Francis was elected head of the Jesuits. He focused on the growth of the Society of Jesus, the spiritual preparation of its new members and spreading the faith in many parts of Europe. He was responsible for the founding of Jesuit missions in Florida, Mexico and Peru. Francis Borgia is often regarded as the second founder of the Jesuits. He died in 1572 and was canonized 100 years later. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today:  Joel 4:12-21;  Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 11-12;  Luke 11:27-28 

As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you. He replied, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it. (Luke 11: 27-28)

Blessedness    Our brief gospel passage today is from St Luke, and Luke — the companion of St Paul and one of the principal writers of the New Testament — includes various tributes to Mary the mother of Jesus. The first comes directly from a great angel. Gabriel is one of three angels who feature in the Old Testament and whose names we are given. He addresses Mary with profound respect, and adds (in various manuscripts), “blessed are you among women” (Luke 1:28). He tells her that she will bring forth a superlative son. This, then, was the pronouncement of heaven. Mary’s kinswoman Elizabeth, speaking under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, utters the same praise: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the one to be born of you” (1:42). Mary herself in response, praises God for what he has done for her and acknowledges the same, “for behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed” (1:48). The Greek word varies, but the sense is similar and consistent. Luke means to be clear: Mary is the most “blessed” among women. Again, in our Gospel passage today which is later in Luke’s Gospel, Mary is pronounced to be “blessed among women”. As we read, “As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you” (Luke 11:27). This, then, is the teaching of the Scriptures, that Mary is the blessed one among God’s creatures. She is the “blessed” one, and as the angel Gabriel made clear, as did Elizabeth her kinswoman, and as did the woman in the crowd today, her blessedness comes from her being the mother of Jesus her divine Son. During his dying moments on the Cross, Christ bestowed on his beloved disciple this blessing that was his mother. “Behold your mother!” he said to him. “Behold your son!” he said to her. John did not include these last words of Christ as a mere curiosity. They were meant to indicate to us that the Church now has a most “blessed” mother and model.

Christ does not rebuff this praise for his mother — it is above all praise for himself. The woman is overcome with admiration for him, and as a mother she cannot help but acknowledge the blessedness of the one who bore and nurtured him. But our Lord — humbly deflecting what is really praise of himself — points to a deeper blessedness. Man is indeed blessed because of what God gives to him, but he is especially blessed if he hears the word of God and obeys it. This is what his own mother did, and it is what he himself always did so supremely. “Can any of you convict me of sin?” he challenged his enemies. “I always do what pleases him,” he says elsewhere. “Not my will, but yours be done” he prayed in agony in the Garden. The supreme blessing of life is not to have abundance of material goods, nor an abundance of goods of any kind. It is not to have been successful in one’s career, or to have an especially wide circle of friends and to enjoy consequent popularity. We do not see this in the life of Mary the mother of Jesus. What we see in her is perfect faith and obedience — humble and hidden withal. The greatest blessing of life is to have found the path to obedience. The supreme success is to have made great headway in true religion, which, as John Henry Newman once wrote, is in essence recognizing God’s authority and obeying it. This is precisely what our Lord tells us in today’s Gospel. The essential thing in life is that we hear the word of God and obey it. Every day we ought rise and immediately make that our ambition for the day. It is often said that we must develop a very positive attitude to life. The most positive thing we can do, and which is attainable for every person whatever be his talents or lack of them, is to strive to know the will of God, to hear his word, and assiduously to obey it. His will and his word is presented in the Scriptures, explicated by the Church, and made concrete in the dictates of conscience and the duties of our state in life.

Let us accept our Lord’s simple and very clear teaching. It is the path to true success, whatever be the poverty of our circumstances and achievements. In this we ought be ever starting again. Every day, let us begin all over again to attend with a full heart to the person and word of Jesus Christ. Hearing his word, let us make it our entire business to put it into practice, for “blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke 11: 27-28).
                                                                             (E.J.Tyler)

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You ask me, and I answer: your perfection consists in living perfectly in the place, occupation and position that God, through those in authority, has assigned to you.
                                                                     (The Way, no.926)
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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fortieth Chapter    MAN HAS NO GOOD IN HIMSELF AND CAN GLORY IN NOTHING

THE DISCIPLE

Let the Jews seek the glory that comes from another. I will seek that which comes from God alone. All human glory, all temporal honour, all worldly position is truly vanity and foolishness compared to Your everlasting glory. O my Truth, my Mercy, my God, O Blessed Trinity, to You alone be praise and honour, power and glory, throughout all the endless ages of ages.
                                               (Concluded)

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We must bear in mind what is meant by perfection. It does not mean any extraordinary service, anything out of the way, or especially heroic—not all have the opportunity of heroic acts, of sufferings—but it means what the word perfection ordinarily means. By perfect we mean that which has no flaw in it, that which is complete, that which is consistent, that which is sound—we mean the opposite to imperfect. As we know well what imperfection in religious service means, we know by the contrast what is meant by perfection.

                               JHN, from Meditations and Devotions (1893)

Twenty eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Prayers this week: If you, O Lord, laid bare our guilt, who could endure it? But you are forgiving, God of Israel. (Ps. 129:3-4)

Lord, our help and guide, make your love the foundation of our lives. May our love for you express itself in our eagerness to do good for others. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(October 11) Blessed Angela Truszkowska (1825-1899)
Today we honour a woman who submitted to God's will throughout her life—a life filled with pain and suffering. Born in 1825 in central Poland and baptized Sophia, she contracted tuberculosis as a young girl. The forced period of convalescence gave her ample time for reflection. Sophia felt called to serve God by working with the poor, including street children and the elderly homeless in Warsaw's slums. In time, her cousin joined her in the work. In 1855, the two women made private vows and consecrated themselves to the Blessed Mother. New followers joined them. Within two years they formed a new congregation, which came to be known as the Felician Sisters. As their numbers grew, so did their work, and so did the pressures on Mother Angela (the new name Sophia took in religious life). Mother Angela served as superior for many years until ill health forced her to resign at the age of 44. She watched the order grow and expand, including missions to the United States among the sons and daughters of Polish immigrants. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1993. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Wisdom 7:7-11; Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30 

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. Good teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus answered. No-one is good— except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honour your father and mother.' Teacher, he declared, all these I have kept since I was a boy. Jesus looked at him and loved him. One thing you lack, he said. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, Who then can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God. Peter said to him, We have left everything to follow you! I tell you the truth, Jesus replied, no-one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields— and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. (Mark 10: 17-30)

Material goods    Our Gospel scene today presents us with a situation of great promise. A man whom our Lord quickly came to regard with a special love presented himself to him. With ardour and respect, he asked from our Lord the direction that leads to heaven. Our Lord appears reserved before this enthusiasm, but immediately learns from the man that this keenness is of a piece with his past life. He has kept God’s commandments from his earliest years. On a separate occasion our Lord said that he counted the one who hears the word of God and keeps it as his brother and sister. Our Lord looked on this man and loved him. He then extended to him a precious invitation which meant so much to our Lord. If you wish to be perfect in the love and service of God, sell all your many possessions and give to the poor, then come and follow me (Mark 10: 17-30). This direct following of Christ in the way indicated would have set him on the path to perfection. But the man, in a terrible sadness, refused. The stumbling block was his attachment to his many possessions. He loved material wealth in a way that led him to turn away from the word and the person of Christ. The thought of this good young man’s material possessions ought lead us to consider the place in life of the material goods we use and own and seek to own. As St Ignatius Loyola states in the foundation meditation of his Spiritual Exercises, man was created to know, love and serve God his Creator. The love and service of God is the objective to which God means the heart of man to be totally attached, and man’s happiness will be found therein. All that the Creator bestows, including material goods, is intended to help man attain this all-encompassing goal. Inasmuch as man is a member of this material world, the material goods which in the providence of God come his way and which he owns, obviously have a fundamental place in his life. But their place must be that given to them by God. In his use of material goods, man must be on guard lest they turn his heart away from the service of God. Rather, they must help him grow in the love of God.

Material goods are not to be used, and are not to have a place in human life, which is at the whim or ambition of man alone. He must in all things be subject to the will of God our Creator as revealed by Jesus Christ his Son, and Christ’s teaching is explained and applied by the Church speaking in his name. The Church has an entire social doctrine involving the correct way of acting in economic, social and political life, as well as the right and duty of human labour, of justice and solidarity among nations, and of love for the poor. From the Encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to the Encyclical Populorum Progressio of Pope Paul VI in 1967 and on to the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate of Pope Benedict in 2009, the Church has pronounced on the proper use of material goods in personal, social and international life. This authoritative teaching may be said to stem from the Seventh Commandment, You shall not steal. That commandment requires firstly, respect for the fact that the goods of the earth are meant for the benefit of all. At the same time, it requires respect for the principle of private ownership of them, as well as respect for persons, for their property and the integrity of creation. By nature we desire property and this natural desire comes from the Creator. The purpose of private ownership is to guarantee our freedom and dignity, to meet our own basic needs and the needs of those who depend on us, as well as the needs of all. If we own little or nothing it is very difficult to meet these needs. But our property must be acquired and received and used in a just way, and the right of all to the satisfaction of their basic needs takes a certain precedence. If the Seventh Commandment is to be observed in individual and social life, the principle of private ownership and the principle that the goods of the earth are intended for all must both be respected by all and kept in balance. The tragic lessons of the past two centuries of capitalist and socialist regimes should be kept vividly in mind, and all ought make it their business to listen to the Church’s social doctrine.

That rich young man who had so much promise allowed material possessions to assume a place in his life which proved to be tragic. That is not to say he lost his soul — we do not know his future. But he failed to gain the pearl of great price, the treasure of all treasures hidden in the field. That pearl, that treasure is union with Jesus Christ and the fulfilment of God’s will. Material goods can help us to please God, or they can lead our hearts astray. Let us for love of God preserve in our hearts a healthy detachment from them so as to be able to grow in a total attachment to God.
                                                                            (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2402-2406 (goods and property)

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Pray for each other. One is wavering?... And another?...

Keep on praying, without losing your peace. Some are going? Some are being lost?... God has you all numbered from eternity!
                                                               (The Way, no.927)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-First Chapter    CONTEMPT FOR ALL EARTHLY HONOUR

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, do not take it to heart if you see others honoured and advanced, while you yourself are despised and humbled. Lift up your heart to Me in heaven and the contempt of men on earth will not grieve you.
                                                                   (Continuing)

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He truly is a rare and marvellous work of heavenly grace, who when he comes into the din and tumult of the world, can view things just as he calmly contemplated them in the distance, before the time of action came.

                 JHN, from the university sermon ‘Contest between Faith and Sight’ (1832)

Monday of the twenty eighth week in Ordinary Time

(October 12) St. Seraphin of Montegranaro (1540-1604)
   Born into a poor Italian family, young Seraphin lived the life of a shepherd and spent much of his time in prayer. Mistreated for a time by his older brother after the two of them had been orphaned, Seraphin became a Capuchin Franciscan at age 16 and impressed everyone with his humility and generosity. Serving as a lay brother, Seraphin imitated St. Francis in fasting, clothing and courtesy to all. He even mirrored Francis' missionary zeal, but Seraphin's superiors did not judge him to be a candidate for the missions. Faithful to the core, Seraphin spent three hours in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament daily. The poor who begged at the friary door came to hold a special love for him. Despite his uneventful life, he reached impressive spiritual heights and has had miracles attributed to him. Seraphin died on October 12, 1604, and was canonized in 1767. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today:  Romans 1:1-7;   Psalm 98:1-4;   Luke 11:29-32 

As the crowds increased, Jesus said, This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. (Luke 11: 29-32)

The Answer    I do not think that any instance can be found in the Old Testament of a prophet claiming to be greater than the prophets before him. Moses did not claim to be greater than Abraham, and Abraham did not claim to be greater than those who would come after him. Any such comparisons were out of the question. Elijah did not claim to be greater than Elisha, his future successor, nor did Elisha claim to be greater than Elijah. Jeremiah did not claim to be the greatest prophet, nor did any other make such a claim. The one figure in all of the Scriptures who did make a claim of this kind was Jesus of Nazareth, and we have an instance of it in our Gospel passage today. The Queen of the South came from Sheba to “listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and now one greater than Solomon is here.” Our Lord says that in his wisdom he is greater than Solomon. The men of Nineveh “repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.” Our Lord is a far greater prophet than Jonah. Christ is serenely aware that all who went before him, all the prophets and kings of which Jonah and Solomon were examples, pointed to him and were transcended by him. On one occasion our Lord said to his disciples in private that blessed were their eyes to see what they were seeing, and their ears to hear what they were hearing, because many prophets and kings sought to see and hear what they had before them, and it was denied them. It is yet another indication of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, and of his own clear consciousness of this. The Scriptures pointed to the One who was coming, and to what God would do for man by means of his coming, but in fact the event proved to be a far greater blessing than was promised. The Messiah, greater than any of the prophets or priests or kings before him, was the Son of God himself. He was one of us, and yet he was God. He was far more than God’s all-holy Servant. He was God’s own Son, equal to the Father.

Despite this, the people were demanding a sign from heaven by way of proof. Our Lord had given many proofs, and John in his Gospel calls them “signs.” He had cured the lepers, healed all kinds of sickness and disease, raised the dead to life, calmed the storms, fed multitudes with a handful of food, cast out intractable demons with a mere word. No prophet or king displayed such constant and effortless power at the service of good. It ought to have been enough, and for this reason our Lord said that “this is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign” (Luke 11: 29-32). All that was really needed was to gaze on him and on the holiness of his life, and listen to his word in faith and obedience. The pagan city of Nineveh looked on Jonah and heard his preaching. They recognized in him a prophet and repented. Far more, then, ought all listen to Jesus of Nazareth and repent. The problem is that we do not want to listen to Jesus, or at least we do not care. We are not interested. We are content to live as if God does not exist — and we do not care if he does. This, I think, is the characteristic posture of modern secular man. His reason has been set adrift from religious faith, and the reason for this is perhaps that he does not recognize sin and its odiousness. Christ is not deemed to be needed. Christ is just one of many religious phenomena in history and a matter more of curiosity than of life and death. His uniqueness is dismissed. The pressing need, then, is to resolve to gaze on Jesus of Nazareth with a consciousness of our need. We must ask God to give us a sense of our true condition and place ourselves in the presence of Jesus, contemplating his person and the blessing of redemption he brings. I once watched an interview with a fine Catholic mother of a large family. She was a convert from Islam. When asked what led her to the Catholic religion, she said it was the thought of Christ the Redeemer, and the thought of our need for redemption. Islam has no recognition of a need to be redeemed.

Every day let us place ourselves in the presence of Jesus Christ, with the conviction that he lives now, risen from the dead and in glory, but present to each of us. He is worthy of our constant contemplation, our constant gaze. Let us resolve to come to know him as our living Friend and Lord, placing our faith in him and resolving to follow him in the ordinary course of our daily life. We must place all our faith in him, a faith based on a vivid awareness of our need and on an intimate knowledge of the One who answers our need.
                                                                                                (E.J.Tyler)

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You are right. 'The peak' — you told me — 'dominates the country for miles around, and yet there is not a single plain to be seen: just one mountain after another. At times the landscape seems to level out, but then the mist rises and reveals another range that had been hidden.'

So it is, so it must be with the horizon of your apostolate: the world has to be crossed. But there are no ways made for you. You yourselves will make them through the mountains with the impact of your feet.
                                                          (The Way, no.928)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-First Chapter    CONTEMPT FOR ALL EARTHLY HONOUR

THE DISCIPLE

Lord, we are blinded and quickly misled by vanity. If I examine myself rightly, no injury has ever been done me by any creature; hence I have nothing for which to make just complaint to You. But I have sinned often and gravely against You; therefore is every creature in arms against me. Confusion and contempt should in justice come upon me, but to You due praise, honour, and glory. And unless I prepare myself to be willingly despised and forsaken by every creature, to be considered absolutely nothing, I cannot have interior peace and strength, nor can I be enlightened spiritually or completely united with You.
                                                       (Concluded)

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The idea of disbelieving, or criticizing the great doctrines of the faith, from the nature of the case, would scarcely occur to the primitive Christians.

             JHN, from The Arians of the Fourth Century (1833)

Tuesday of the twenty eighth week in Ordinary Time

(October 13) St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690)  (Picture on left: face of St Margaret Mary)
    Margaret Mary was chosen by Christ to arouse the Church to a realization of the love of God symbolized by the heart of Jesus. Her early years were marked by sickness and a painful home situation. "The heaviest of my crosses was that I could do nothing to lighten the cross my mother was suffering." After considering marriage for some time, Margaret entered the Order of Visitation nuns at the age of 24. A Visitation nun was "not to be extraordinary except by being ordinary," but the young nun was not to enjoy this anonymity. A fellow novice (shrewdest of critics) termed Margaret humble, simple and frank, but above all kind and patient under sharp criticism and correction. She could not meditate in the formal way expected, though she tried her best to give up her "prayer of simplicity." Slow, quiet and clumsy, she was assigned to help an infirmarian who was a bundle of energy. On December 21, 1674, three years a nun, she received the first of her revelations. She felt "invested" with the presence of God, though always afraid of deceiving herself in such matters. The request of Christ was that his love for humankind be made evident through her. During the next 13 months he appeared to her at intervals. His human heart was to be the symbol of his divine-human love. By her own love she was to make up for the coldness and ingratitude of the world—by frequent and loving Holy Communion, especially on the first Friday of each month, and by an hour's vigil of prayer every Thursday night in memory of his agony and isolation in Gethsemane. He also asked that a feast of reparation be instituted.
Like all saints, Margaret had to pay for her gift of holiness. Some of her own sisters were hostile. Theologians who were called in declared her visions delusions and suggested that she eat more heartily. Later, parents of children she taught called her an impostor, an unorthodox innovator. A new confessor, Blessed Claude de la Colombiere, a Jesuit, recognized her genuineness and supported her. Against her great resistance, Christ called her to be a sacrificial victim for the shortcomings of her own sisters, and to make this known. After serving as novice mistress and assistant superior, she died at the age of 43 while being anointed. "I need nothing but God, and to lose myself in the heart of Jesus."
   Christ speaks to St. Margaret Mary: "Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love. In return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt they have for me in this sacrament of love.... I come into the heart I have given you in order that through your fervour you may atone for the offences which I have received from lukewarm and slothful hearts that dishonour me in the Blessed Sacrament" (Third apparition). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Romans 1:16-25; Psalm 19:2-5; Luke 11:37-41 

When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised. Then the Lord said to him, Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you. (Luke 11:37-41)

Material means        Our Lord’s indictment of the scribes, the Pharisees and the Sadducees is manifest in the Gospels. But we must not think that all the scribes and all the Pharisees were the object of our Lord’s denunciation. Nicodemus was one of the Pharisees, and though fearful of the censure of his colleagues, he visited Jesus by night to be taught by him. He defended Jesus among his peers when their hostility was mounting, and he assisted Joseph of Arimathea when the moment came for Christ’s burial. Moreover, at the time of his visits to Jesus by night he said that “we know” that you are a teacher from God — implying that there were others apart from himself who recognized this. At the time of the trial of the Apostles before the Sanhedrin, Gamaliel, a doctor of the law and leading Pharisee solemnly urged restraint and a certain liberality in respect to the new persuasion. Moreover, Paul, though of the party of the Pharisees and intent on destroying the Christian sect, was upright and a true man of conscience. He was a good man though profoundly mistaken. All this is to say that not all the Pharisees were guilty of what our Lord says here. That having been said, our Lord’s words are clear that many were indeed guilty. Let us notice a detail in our Lord’s denunciation of them. We read that when he had finished speaking, he was invited by a Pharisee to dine at his house. We gain the impression, incidentally, that the Pharisees were well off. They were men of means. We notice that our Lord criticizes them for what they do not do with their means — they do not assist the poor. He says in our text that “you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness”. The externals of their religion — those religious observances that were to be seen by others — are clean and polished and present a bright spectacle. But “inside” they are “full” — “full”, let us notice — of both greed and evil. Greed was a principal feature of their moral decay.

Our Lord repeats his point in the same passage when he tells his host what he and his colleagues must do. “Give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you” (Luke 11:37-41). They must give of their means to the poor and the effect will be great for their own spiritual condition. It is yet another example of the Christian insistence on the Christ-like service of the poor. Our Lord was filled with compassion for the poor, and he exercised his divine power time and again for their benefit. We read that when Judas left the Last Supper, some thought that, having the care of the common fund, he was being directed by our Lord to give to the poor. This implies that part and parcel of the use of monies that came for the sustenance of the Apostolic body was almsgiving to the poor. When Paul eventually came up to Jerusalem well after his conversion to meet with the Apostles, he was assigned by them to work among the Gentiles, with the request that he have a constant concern for the poor. It is an essential feature of the Christian religion that the poor be cared for and that, to the extent possible, we use our means in their service. In our Lord’s description of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25), the Judge will say, I was naked and you clothed me — going on to explain that whatever is done to the least he counts as having been done to him. But of course this is not just a command of supernatural revelation — that revelation granted to man by Christ and by the prophetic tradition prior to him. It is clearly a command of the natural law to which the conscience of the prudent and good man will bear witness. When disaster hits, aid agencies appeal for generous donations, and the conscience of man sanctions their request. Each person hears the voice of conscience dictating to him that he assist the poor. It is the voice of God being naturally revealed, which is clearer still when supernaturally revealed. The poor have a right to sufficient goods of the earth to meet their legitimate needs, and it is, in effect, stealing from them to leave them in their abject poverty.

As the Second Vatican Council states in its decree on The Church in the Modern World, “in his use of things man should regard the external goods he legitimately owns not merely as exclusive to himself but common to others also, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as himself” (GS, 69, 1). Our ownership of goods makes us a steward of God’s fatherly Providence, with the task of making it fruitful and communicating its benefits to others — first of all, of course, to those for which one is directly responsible, but also for all those in need. Let us resolve to use the good things God has given us for the benefit not only of ourselves, but for all those in need.
                                                                                    (E.J.Tyler)

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The Cross on your breast?... Very good. But the Cross on your shoulders, the Cross in your flesh, the Cross in your mind. Only then will you live for Christ, with Christ and in Christ; only then will you be an apostle.
                                                                                (The Way, no.929)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Second Chapter     PEACE IS NOT TO BE PLACED IN MEN

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, if you place your peace in any creature because of your own feeling or for the sake of his company, you will be unsettled and entangled. But if you have recourse to the ever-living and abiding Truth, you will not grieve if a friend should die or forsake you. Your love for your friend should be grounded in Me, and for My sake you should love whoever seems to be good and is very dear to you in this life. Without Me friendship has no strength and cannot endure. Love which I do not bind is neither true nor pure.
                                                             (Continuing)

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Liberty of thought is in itself a good; but it gives an opening to false liberty. Now by Liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters, in which, from the constitution of the human mind, thought cannot be brought to any successful issue, and therefore is out of place.

                                                  JHN, from the Apologia pro Vita Sua (1865)

Wednesday of the twenty eighth week in Ordinary Time

(October14) St. Callistus I (d. 223?)
    The most reliable information about this saint comes from his enemy St. Hippolytus, an early antipope, later a martyr for the Church. A negative principle is used: If some worse things had happened, Hippolytus would surely have mentioned them. Callistus was a slave in the imperial Roman household. Put in charge of the bank by his master, he lost the money deposited, fled and was caught. After serving time for a while, he was released to make some attempt to recover the money. Apparently he carried his zeal too far, being arrested for brawling in a Jewish synagogue. This time he was condemned to work in the mines of Sardinia. He was released through the influence of the emperor's mistress and lived at Anzio (site of a famous World War II beachhead). After winning his freedom, Callistus was made superintendent of the public Christian burial ground in Rome (still called the cemetery of St. Callistus), probably the first land owned by the Church. The pope ordained him a deacon and made him his friend and adviser. He was elected pope by a majority vote of the clergy and laity of Rome, and thereafter was attacked by the losing candidate, St. Hippolytus, who let himself be set up as the first antipope in the history of the Church. The schism lasted about 18 years. Hippolytus is venerated as a saint. He was banished during the persecution of 235 and was reconciled to the Church. He died from his sufferings in Sardinia. He attacked Callistus on two fronts—doctrine and discipline. Hippolytus seems to have exaggerated the distinction between Father and Son (almost making two gods) possibly because theological language had not yet been refined. He also accused Callistus of being too lenient, for reasons we may find surprising: (1) Callistus admitted to Holy Communion those who had already done public penance for murder, adultery, fornication; (2) he held marriages between free women and slaves to be valid—contrary to Roman law; (3) he authorized the ordination of men who had been married two or three times; (4) he held that mortal sin was not a sufficient reason to depose a bishop; (5) he held to a policy of leniency toward those who had temporarily denied their faith during persecution. Callistus was martyred during a local disturbance in Trastevere, Rome, and is the first pope (except for Peter) to be commemorated as a martyr in the earliest martyrology of the Church. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Romans 2:1-11;  Psalm 62:2-3, 6-7, 9;  Luke 11:42-46 

Jesus said, Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practised the latter without leaving the former undone. Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the market-places. Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it. One of the experts in the law answered him, Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also. Jesus replied, And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. (Luke 11:42-46)

Justice    Our Lord begins his words in today’s passage with a woe. There are four woes (Greek: ouai). The woe suggests a grieving because of the judgment to come. Our Lord uses this word earlier in the Gospel when, having designated the Twelve, the whole multitude gathers before him. In that earlier chapter (ch.6), our Lord utters his beatitudes and his woes, a much briefer form of what St Matthew reports at the beginning of his presentation of the Sermon on the Mount. He speaks to his disciples (Luke 6:20), telling them that they are blessed when they are poor, when they hunger, when they are sorrowful and when they are hated because of him. Then he turns to those whose life consists of seeking riches, being full of all they want, having a life of pleasure and laughter and being adulated by the world. Woe to you, he repeats four times: ouai! You are living to yourselves. You are heading towards the judgment of God. Having pronounced this multiple woe, our Lord then goes on immediately to command a loving service of others. To you who hear, he continues, love your enemies, bless them, offer the other cheek, give to all who ask, do to others as you would want done to you. Be merciful and do not judge. It is clear that the woe pronounced by our Lord is a terrible warning to those who do not love God and serve their neighbour. In our Gospel today, which is from a later chapter (ch.11), our Lord again pronounces a woe. Three times he lays a woe on the Pharisees and once on the lawyers — but two more woes are to be pronounced on the lawyers in following passages of this chapter. Let us consider, then, the woe pronounced on the Pharisees of our Gospel passage today. You Pharisees fiddle and tinker with mint, rue and all kinds of garden herbs and make such things the centrepiece of your religion. Yet you neglect the judgment and the love of God. Notice the word, “judgment” (Greek: krisin) — in many versions rendered as “justice.” Our Lord is referring to what the judgment (krisin) will be all about: man’s practice of justice. Our Lord is saying that they neglect both the practice of justice towards others and love for God.

This concise statement by our Lord sets before us how central to the divine judgment will be the practice of justice. The Pharisees neglected the judgment, which is to say, what will dominate the judgment of God. In the twenty fifth chapter of St Matthew, our Lord describes in grand and vivid detail the General Judgment on mankind. It is remarkable how much will depend on our practice of justice during life. One of the most notable features of religion in the history of mankind is the degree to which the observance of ceremony has dominated religion. The gods are placated and won over by the due and careful observance of the ceremonies. Thereby they feel honoured. But revealed religion has a remarkable stress on justice. The prophets are singular in their denunciation of a religion of ceremonies that neglects the needs and the rights of others, most especially the poor. This, of course, must in no way to be understood as a dismissal of formal and wholehearted worship, for the prophets and the entire Scriptures stress in great detail the centrality of worship. Our Lord vigorously cleansed the Temple. It is the focus of the Third Commandment. But worship and ceremony is utterly vitiated when there is a callous indifference to those in need. If we aspire to love God — as we must, for it is the very first commandment — then we must aspire to love and serve others. The implication of much of our Lord’s teaching is that it is justice which is in constant danger of being neglected. So important is this that at the General Judgment, Christ our Judge will say to us that when we served the least we were serving him, when we neglected the least we were neglecting him. The Pharisees were neglecting the judgment, because they were neglecting the practice of justice which will be the centrepiece of the divine judgment. In this, they were neglecting the love of God. “These,” — the judgment and the love of God — “you ought to have done, while not leaving the other undone” (Luke 11:42-46).

The first three of the ten commandments direct our lives to the love and veneration of God, both individually and together as God’s family. The remaining seven commandments direct our lives to the practice of justice towards others and towards ourselves. The love of God must be shown in the practice of justice. There will be no love without justice. Nor, of course, will there be true justice without love and mercy. Let us beware of being like the Pharisees in our religion, for God wants a religion of the heart, a heart given over to him and manifested in our love for those around us.
                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

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Apostolic soul: first of all, yourself. Our Lord has said, through Saint Matthew: 'When the day of Judgment comes, many will say to me: "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, work many miracles in your name?" Then I shall tell them to their faces: "I have never known you; away from me, you evil men"'.

God forbid — says Saint Paul — that I, who have preached to others should myself be rejected.
                                                         (The Way, no.930)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Second Chapter   PEACE IS NOT TO BE PLACED IN MEN

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

You ought, therefore, to be so dead to such human affections as to wish as far as lies within you to be without the fellowship of men. Man draws nearer to God in proportion as he withdraws farther from all earthly comfort. And he ascends higher to God as he descends lower into himself and grows more vile in his own eyes. He who attributes any good to himself hinders God's grace from coming into his heart, for the grace of the Holy Spirit seeks always the humble heart.
                                                      (Continuing)

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While, then, Reason and Revelation are consistent in fact, they often are inconsistent in appearance; and this seeming discordance acts most keenly and alarmingly on the Imagination, and may suddenly expose a man to the temptation, and even hurry him on to the commission, of definite acts of unbelief, in which reason itself really does not come into exercise at all.

                                         JHN, from The Idea of a University Part II (1858)

Friday of the twenty eighth week in Ordinary Time

(October 16) St. Marguerite d’Youville (1701-1771)
  We learn compassion from allowing our lives to be influenced by compassionate people, by seeing life from their perspective and reconsidering our own values. Born in Varennes, Canada, Marie Marguerite Dufrost de Lajemmerais had to interrupt her schooling at the age of 12 to help her widowed mother. Eight years later she married Francois d'Youville; they had six children, four of whom died young. Despite the fact that her husband gambled, sold liquor illegally to Native Americans and treated her indifferently, she cared for him compassionately before his death in 1730. Even though she was caring for two small children and running a store to help pay off her husband's debts, Marguerite still helped the poor. Once her children were grown, she and several companions rescued a Quebec hospital that was in danger of failing. She called her community the Institute of the Sisters of Charity of Montreal; the people called them the "Grey Nuns" because of the colour of their habit. In time, a proverb arose among the poor people of Montreal, "Go to the Grey Nuns; they never refuse to serve." In time, five other religious communities traced their roots to the Grey Nuns. The General Hospital in Montreal became known as the Hotel Dieu (House of God) and set a standard for medical care and Christian compassion. When the hospital was destroyed by fire in 1766, she knelt in the ashes, led the Te Deum (a hymn to God's providence in all circumstances) and began the rebuilding process. She fought the attempts of government officials to restrain her charity and established the first foundling home in North America.
   Pope John XXIII, who beatified her in 1959, called her the "Mother of Universal Charity." She was canonized in 1990. "More than once the work which Marguerite undertook was hindered by nature or people. In order to work to bring that new world of justice and love closer, she had to fight some hard and difficult battles" (John Paul II, at canonization). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Romans 4:1-8; Psalm 32:1b-2, 5, 11; Luke 12:1-7 

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. (Luke 12:1-7)

In God’s presence    It is a commonplace observation that religion is all too often a matter of mere religious observances. In making such a critique of the religion of very many people, it is not being suggested that religious observances are not necessary for religion. Rather, the criticism is that in such a case religion consists in little more than religious observances. A person goes to church or to synagogue or to mosque on the designated days, but his life for the rest of the time is lived as if God had altogether receded from the scene of life. It is akin to an official religion which keeps the gods happy by fulfilling their basic requirements of ritual. As all know, or as all ought know, religion is not this. True religion is a religion present in, and springing from, the heart of man. It flows out into the duties of his daily life and is manifested in a special way by the heartfelt observance of that worship which God wants. True religion is not merely — though it most certainly includes — the fulfilment of the duty to worship God publicly and privately. It is also the fulfilment of the duties of everyday life for love of him. Religion should pervade all of life — indeed it ought pervade all of social and political and international life. The significant feature of the modern world when set against the background of previous eras is that life is separated from religion, whereas life has characteristically been pervaded by religion — even if the religion itself has been profoundly faulty. So the question before every person whose religious instincts are alive and seeking to be respected is, how am I to live a life that is genuinely religious? What is the key to a life pervaded by religion rather than a life that turns to religion only on occasion? The key to it is to discover the presence of God and then, by deliberate resolve and policy, to live in it. God is present to man because man constantly draws his life and being from him. But man must turn his attention to the divine presence, discover it, and then abide daily in it with obedient awareness.

We must learn to live in the presence of God. The Christian knows that God has become man and has united us to himself by the grace of faith and baptism. In our Gospel today our Lord warns his disciples against hypocrisy, which is to say, living with the appearance of religious practice while one’s heart is far from God. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” In essence this means living in the presence of men and seeking their favour while living out of the presence of God and being without regard for his favour. It means having little sense of the presence of God who sees all. Our Lord continues by reminding his disciples that God sees all and that all will be disclosed before his unerring gaze and judgment. Nothing is, nor will be, hidden from him. “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.” We must abide constantly in the presence of God, knowing that his favour alone matters, for in him all will be brought to light and rewarded accordingly. “Abide in my love,” Christ told his disciples on another occasion. It is the one who abides in his love profoundly and consistently who has the wherewithal to withstand the pressures and the threats of all that is contrary to God and the moral law. “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him” (Luke 12:1-7). Do not be afraid, Christ commands us. It was a refrain repeated time and again during the pontificate of John Paul II, and its basis is the resolve to abide in the loving presence of God and Christ. The only one ultimately to fear is God our Father whose love and favour must be the constant basis of our life. All other fears pale before the fear of offending him. As St Thomas More, one-time chancellor of England said as he approached the scaffold, “Though I lose my head I’ll come to no harm.”

Our fear of offending God is the fear of offending one who loves us with a fatherly and everlasting love. He knows every element of our being, for he sustains us moment by moment. “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” On the one hand we fear offending him, but on the other, if we live in his presence ultimately we may fear nothing and no one. Living in the presence of God is the basis of religion.
                                                                   (E.J.Tyler)

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Look: the apostles, for all their evident and undeniable defects, were sincere, simple... transparent.

You too have evident and undeniable defects. May you not lack simplicity.
                                                           (The Way, no.932)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Third Chapter    BEWARE VAIN AND WORLDLY KNOWLEDGE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, do not let the fine-sounding and subtle words of men deceive you. For the kingdom of heaven consists not in talk but in virtue. Attend, rather, to My words which enkindle the heart and enlighten the mind, which excite contrition and abound in manifold consolations. Never read them for the purpose of appearing more learned or more wise. Apply yourself to mortifying your vices, for this will benefit you more than your understanding of many difficult questions.
                                                    (Continuing)

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The arguments for religion do not compel any one to believe, just as arguments for good conduct do not compel any one to obey. Obedience is the consequence of willing to obey, and faith is the consequence of willing to believe; we may see what is right, whether in matters of faith or obedience, of ourselves, but we cannot will what is right without the grace of God.

                                         JHN, from the sermon ‘Faith and Doubt‘ (1849)

Saturday of the twenty eighth week in Ordinary Time

Prayers this week: If you, O Lord, laid bare our guilt, who could endure it? But you are forgiving, God of Israel. (Ps. 129:3-4)

Lord, our help and guide, make your love the foundation of our lives. May our love for you express itself in our eagerness to do good for others. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(October 17)  Saint Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr (d. 107?)
   Born in Syria, Ignatius converted to Christianity and eventually became bishop of Antioch. In the year 107, Emperor Trajan visited Antioch and forced the Christians there to choose between death and apostasy. Ignatius would not deny Christ and thus was condemned to be put to death in Rome. Ignatius is well known for the seven letters he wrote on the long journey from Antioch to Rome. Five of these letters are to Churches in Asia Minor; they urge the Christians there to remain faithful to God and to obey their superiors. He warns them against heretical doctrines, providing them with the solid truths of the Christian faith. The sixth letter was to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who was later martyred for the faith. The final letter begs the Christians in Rome not to try to stop his martyrdom. "The only thing I ask of you is to allow me to offer the libation of my blood to God. I am the wheat of the Lord; may I be ground by the teeth of the beasts to become the immaculate bread of Christ." Ignatius bravely met the lions in the Circus Maximus.
   "I greet you from Smyrna together with the Churches of God present here with me. They comfort me in every way, both in body and in soul. My chains, which I carry about on me for Jesus Christ, begging that I may happily make my way to God, exhort you: persevere in your concord and in your community prayers" (Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Church at Tralles). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Romans 4:13, 16-18; Psalm 105:6-9, 42-43; Luke 12:8-12

Jesus said, I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say. (Luke 12: 8-12)

Bearing witness    Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America (1835 and 1840) wrote of the tendency for the majority of a democracy to provide opinions to individuals who then feel freed from the necessity to formulate their own. One instance of this is the influence of the democratic press and mass media. While often being a manifestation of the culture and the view of the majority, the media forms the opinions of the mass of individuals who too often take little trouble to assess what they read or hear. One result of this can be the lack of true argument in social discourse. For example, in response to a question by a journalist during his flight to Africa in 2009, the Pope, observed that condoms are not the true way to deal with the scourge of AIDS. In fact, it sets the problem back. The Western media and European government officials erupted. There was no space for true argument. The few experts in the field vainly tried to counter the prevailing clamour by presenting the statistical facts which greatly support the Pope. The very successful papal visit to Africa proceeded, Africans supported him, demographic experts gradually made their views known, and for those following the argument carefully the Pope was quietly vindicated. But what was been lacking was the opportunity for true argument. Now this is vitally important for the modern democracy. But — and this is most important — if there is to be true argument and an advance in the standard of national conversation, the argument must bring forward and revolve around first principles. A democracy above all else ought be a regime in which the first principles of life and thought are able to be argued out in freedom and respect. These first principles are the starting points, the fundamental positions, from which flow the opinions of individuals and communities. One widely held first principle which in the West emerged from the Enlightenment is that life and the world runs on its own terms. It is a weakness to depend on God. What is real is what is to be seen and empirically verified. This is assumed, and the assumption has practical results.

Other assumptions could be mentioned, but the point I am making here is that a society depends for its health on public conversation involving argument. The argument must be characterised by civility and it ought be argument that involves the discussion of first principles. This brings us to our Gospel passage today. Our Lord in effect speaks of the contribution which the Christian should make to the public conversation among men and in society. Indeed, the Christian is absolutely obliged for love of Christ himself and for love of his fellow man to engage in the argument and to strive to do so at the level of first principles. The first principle of the Christian which he considers to be the first principle of life and the world, is the person and status of Christ. Christ is the linchpin of the world and the source of its true life. Without him man dies an ultimate death. It is of critical importance for the world that it hear the argument for this, and it is the Christian alone who can initiate and sustain the conversation. Let us consider Christ’s words. “I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God.” The disciple of Christ is bound to acknowledge before men the person and mission and teaching of Jesus Christ. If he does not, Christ will not acknowledge him before the angels in heaven. The world depends on this acknowledgement. A second thing is revealed by Jesus Christ, and it is that the world will not be ready to discuss it. It is predisposed against the subject. In fact, it will make life difficult for those who argue for, and live by, the basic principle that Jesus Christ is Lord — indeed, Lord of lords and King of kings, the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth. But the aid of God is promised to the disciple who bears this witness. So it is that our Lord continues, “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say” (Luke 12: 8-12).

Let the Christian regard himself as an agent of change. Let him readily engage with his times. Let him enter into it and be part of the tide, endeavouring to change its course. While he does in a sense act alone, as a guerrilla, we might say, he is not really alone. He is a member of Christ’s Church and all his fellows in belief are living and acting in Christ the head. Thus society can be changed in accord with the true first principles. But the argument — ever civil — must be sustained. The conversation must not be allowed to fall silent, for evil flourishes when good people say and do nothing. In our hearts we must ever be shouting, may Jesus Christ reign!
                                                                              (E.J.Tyler)

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There is a story of a soul who, on saying to our Lord in prayer, 'Jesus, I love you', heard this reply from heaven: 'Love means deeds, not sweet words.'

Think if you also could deserve this gentle reproach.
                                                                     (The Way, no.933)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Third Chapter     BEWARE VAIN AND WORLDLY KNOWLEDGE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Though you shall have read and learned many things, it will always be necessary for you to return to this one principle: I am He who teaches man knowledge, and to the little ones I give a clearer understanding than can be taught by man. He to whom I speak will soon be wise and his soul will profit. But woe to those who inquire of men about many curious things, and care very little about the way they serve Me.
                                                                 (Continuing)

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In this day especially it is very easy for men to be benevolent, liberal, and dispassionate. It costs nothing to be dispassionate when you feel nothing, to be cheerful when you have nothing to fear, to be generous or liberal when what you give is not your own, and to be benevolent and considerate when you have no principles and no opinions. Men nowadays are moderate and equitable, not because the Lord is at hand, but because they do not feel that He is coming. Quietness is a grace, not in itself, only when it is grafted on the stem of faith, zeal, self-abasement, and diligence.

                                                JHN, from the sermon ‘Equanimity’ (1839)

St. Luke the Evangelist (October 18)

Entrance Antiphon Is 52:7    How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings of peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation! Gloria in excelsis.

Collect     Lord God, who chose Saint Luke to reveal by his preaching and writings the mystery of your love for the poor, grant that those who already glory in your name may persevere as one heart and one soul and that all nations may merit to see your salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

(October 18) St. Luke the Evangelist
    Luke wrote one of the major portions of the New Testament, a two-volume work comprising the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. In the two books he shows the parallel between the life of Christ and that of the Church. He is the only Gentile Christian among the Gospel writers. Tradition holds him to be a native of Antioch, and Paul calls him "our beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14). His Gospel was probably written between A.D. 70 and 85. Luke appears in Acts during Paul’s second journey, remains at Philippi for several years until Paul returns from his third journey, accompanies Paul to Jerusalem and remains near him when he is imprisoned in Caesarea. During these two years, Luke had time to seek information and interview persons who had known Jesus. He accompanied Paul on the dangerous journey to Rome where he was a faithful companion. "Only Luke is with me," Paul writes (2 Timothy 4:11).
    Luke wrote as a Gentile for Gentile Christians. This Gospel reveals Luke's expertise in classic Greek style as well as his knowledge of Jewish sources. The character of Luke may best be seen by the emphases of his Gospel, which has been given a number of subtitles: (1) The Gospel of Mercy: Luke emphasizes Jesus' compassion and patience with the sinners and the suffering. He has a broadminded openness to all, showing concern for Samaritans, lepers, publicans, soldiers, public sinners, unlettered shepherds, the poor. Luke alone records the stories of the sinful woman, the lost sheep and coin, the prodigal son, the good thief. (2) The Gospel of Universal Salvation: Jesus died for all. He is the son of Adam, not just of David, and Gentiles are his friends too. (3) The Gospel of the Poor: "Little people" are prominent—Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, shepherds, Simeon and the elderly widow, Anna. He is also concerned with what we now call "evangelical poverty." (4) The Gospel of Absolute Renunciation: He stresses the need for total dedication to Christ. (5) The Gospel of Prayer and the Holy Spirit: He shows Jesus at prayer before every important step of his ministry. The Spirit is bringing the Church to its final perfection. (6) The Gospel of Joy: Luke succeeds in portraying the joy of salvation that permeated the primitive Church. (Luke 24:50-53).  (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today:    2 Timothy 4:10-17b;     Psalm 145;     Luke 10:1-9

The Lord Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, “The harvest is abundant but the labourers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out labourers for his harvest. Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals; and greet no one along the way. Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this household.’ If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for the labourer deserves payment. Do not move about from one house to another. Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick in it and say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’” (Luke 10:1-9)

The mission       There are two features to be noticed in the history of God’s chosen people before the coming of Jesus Christ. The first is that the chosen people had a universal mission. This note is decisively struck in the Book of Genesis at the appearance of Abram and his call by God. “I will make you a great nation ... All the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves because of you” (Genesis 12:2-3). This promise that the chosen people, the children of Israel, would bear along with them a blessing for the world flickers here and there throughout the Old Testament, at times flaring out in the Prophets, such as in Isaiah. Somehow, salvation would come from the Jews. What this meant was, of course, disputed, but it was the Messiah who would bring this blessing not only to the children of Israel, but to all the tribes of the earth. At the same time, the constant effort was to preserve Israel in the faith amid all its temptations to infidelity and amid all its reversals. That is to say, the universal impetus never took flight. The preoccupation of the prophets and of the religious leaders was to hold the people to the Law and to all that God had spoken. It was as if this was as much as could be managed in that dispensation―but things would change when the Messiah arrived. It was then that the world would know the difference. Now, among the many differences between Jesus and the prophets prior to him, including John the Baptist, was precisely this universal thrust. From the outset, Jesus Christ was engaged in a very missionary activity. He did not simply attract disciples―he sought them. He drew his disciples not only into the acceptance of his teaching, but into an active participation in his mission to the whole of the House of Israel, particularly its lost and wandering sheep. Twelve were established as the future foundation, as it were, and were to be his special companions. They were apostles―his envoys. Follow me, he said to Simon and his companions, and I will make you fishers of men. It was a missionary business, and other disciples―72 of them―were sent out, two by two. From the appearance of Jesus Christ, first Israel, then the world, was the great target of action.

So it is that the “Church” which Christ built, and in which he lodged the “keys of the Kingdom of Heaven” (which he had so incessantly preached), was “catholic” (or universal) and “apostolic.” It was “apostolic” in that it was founded on the Apostles with Simon at their head and as the Rock, and in that it was enlivened by the missionary spirit of Christ and the Apostles. Importantly, it was universal (or “catholic”). It was not primarily a national Church, as the religion of the Jews had primarily been a religion of the children of Israel. It was “catholic,” universal. It possessed an inherent impulse (derived from the presence of the Holy Spirit, with Christ at her head) to take root everywhere, and to make disciples of all the nations. Christ’s parting command to his disciples was that they go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations. The very first step taken by the infant Church―after it received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost bringing it into birth―gave to it its universal character. That first step was the preaching of Simon Peter. As a result, a large number were baptized―the Acts of the Apostles tells us that some 3000 were added to their number (Acts 2: 41), and these were drawn from all over the known world (Acts 2: 8-12). That is to say, from the first, immediately after its birth at Pentecost, the Church was catholic, universal. Its impulse was to take Christ not only to the House of Israel, but to the ends of the earth. The blessing promised in Genesis for all the tribes of the earth was now being brought to them by the Church Christ founded on the Apostles. These are some of the things we think of when we think of St Luke the Evangelist. Luke was not an Apostle, but was a member of the Church founded on the Apostles. He was not what we would now call a “bishop”―one with the fullness of the ministerial priesthood (like his companion Paul), nor was he a “presbyter”―a ministerial priest. He was a layman―a doctor, and as it turned out, an inspired writer. Luke’s Gospel has distinctive feature―one of the most obvious being his rich accounts of the infancy of Jesus Christ and his portrayal of the virgin Mary. All of this was part of the dedicated service he gave to the Church in its indefatigable mission.

It is especially through his Gospel that St Luke will shape the Church till the end of the world. He was privileged to be an instrument of the Holy Spirit in his account of the birth, the childhood, the ministry, the Passion, the Death, the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus Christ our Lord. It is a beautiful Gospel that he has written. I would propose that St Luke could be regarded as a model Christian layman for the Church till the end of history. His love for Jesus Christ and for his blessed Mother is manifest. Let us love and venerate this saint, and learn to imitate him.
                                                                            (E.J.Tyler)

 

World Mission Sunday (Second-last Sunday in October)

A possible Gospel: Matthew 28: 16-20

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28: 16-20)

The Church's Mission      One of the many gains of modern Scriptural studies is a new appreciation of the distinctive approach of each of the four Gospels. The differences among them are not simply a matter of discrepancies, but of different perspectives and preoccupations. Two Gospels may report the same event, but while one may include a certain detail, another may not. For example, one Gospel’s narration of the confrontation between our Lord and the Pharisees in the Synagogue includes our Lord looking around on them in anger, grieved at the hardness and blindness of their hearts, while another (Luke) drops the mention of his anger. Of interest are the different ways the four Gospels conclude. The last chapter of St Mark’s Gospel is of uncertain composition―our received text is made up of different manuscripts. This need not concern us here, but as it stands the Angel in the empty tomb orders the women to go and tell the “disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee: there you shall see him, as he said to you” (Mark 16:7). But there is no formal mention of their going to Galilee. The post-resurrection scene remains in Jerusalem (16:8-15.19). What is stressed in Mark’s final chapter is the encounter with the risen Jesus and his command that his disciples go “to the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), crowned by his Ascension and their going forth everywhere (Mark 16:19-20). Luke’s entire post-Resurrection scene is in the Jerusalem area (Luke 24: 13-53; Acts 1:4-2:4), with no mention of Galilee. Christ’s command to bear witness to him “in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” is stressed. He then ascends into heaven, having directed them to await the Holy Spirit (Acts 1: 8-9). In John’s Gospel, which seems originally to have concluded at chapter 20: 28-31, there is no mention of a sojourn in Galilee till the later addition of chapter 21. In this original conclusion (chapter 20), there is the conferral of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and Christ’s granting to them of their share in the mission Christ had received from his Father (John 20: 21-22). There is this stress on mission. Chapter 21 is especially concerned with Christ’s relationship with Peter and his giving to Peter his special mission in the Church.

What is common to the accounts by Mark, Luke and John is an emphasis on the mission of the Church to bring the Gospel to mankind. This is a particularly notable feature of the Christian religion, just as it was the notable feature of the public life of Jesus Christ himself. He did not stay in one place attracting disciples, as did John. He went out to the entire land of the House of Israel, attracting disciples not merely to his teaching, but to his person. To the rich young man he said that if he wished to be perfect, he should sell all and follow him. Christ was a missionary, and discipleship involved a share in this missionary existence. The Christian religion involved the love, adoration and company of the person of Jesus Christ but importantly, it also involved bringing others into his company as his disciples. It would not do, as far as Jesus Christ was concerned, simply to be with him and to be unconcerned with whether or not others were with him. One had to be up and doing in some sense, and participating in our Lord’s own quest to bring all others into his circle of disciples―indeed the whole wide world. The matter was critical because entry into the Kingdom of Heaven was gained precisely by becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ, and this one did by becoming a member of his Church by faith and baptism. Each of Christ’s disciples had to understand that love for him―which is the soul of Christianity―includes striving to bring all to the knowledge and love of him. Now, our chosen Gospel passage for World Mission Sunday today is from the end of the Gospel of St Matthew (Matthew 28: 16-20). It is plain that Matthew wishes to conclude his Gospel with the proclamations of the Resurrection, of Jesus Christ as possessing “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18), and of the mission of the Church. Christ’s disciples were to go “and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19). Christ promises to be with them till the end of the world. There is no mention of the Ascension, no mention of the appearances in the Jerusalem area, no mention of the coming of the Holy Spirit. What Matthew chooses to stress is the Fact of the risen Christ and the mission of the Church to bring him to the nations.

The Catholic Church, the Church founded by Jesus Christ, may be said to be a sleeping giant. The militant British atheist of the early years of this century, Richard Dawkins, chose to attack and protest what he calls the power of the Catholic Church. Such a characterisation is laughable. But it does suggest to the Church’s members the responsibility they have to take up the mission of Jesus Christ in which they share by baptism, and to prosecute it. One of the great gains of the Second Vatican Council was the reclaiming of the vocation of all members of Christ’s faithful to holiness and to mission. Let each of Christ’s faithful see every day as a share in the adventure that is Christ’s mission to make disciples of the whole world. Therein lies the world’s salvation.

                                                             (E.J.Tyler)
 

Twenty ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Prayers this week:   I call upon you, God, for you will answer me; bend your ear and hear my prayer. Guard me as the pupil of your eye; hide me in the shade of your wings. (Psalm 16: 6.8)

Almighty and ever-living God, our source of power and inspiration, give us strength and joy in serving your as followers of Christ. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.
 

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Scripture: Isaiah 53:10-11; Ps 33:4-5, 18-20, 22; Heb 4:14-16; Mk 10:35-45 or 10:42-45 

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. Teacher, they said, we want you to do for us whatever we ask. What do you want me to do for you? he asked. They replied, Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory. You don't know what you are asking, Jesus said. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with? We can, they answered. Jesus said to them, You will drink the cup I drink and be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared. When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials impose authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10: 35-45)

The common good     I once watched a Vietnamese movie portraying the terrible sufferings of many Vietnamese in communist re-education camps. At great threat to their lives many attempted to escape, at times succeeding. Once scene showed a conversation between the young and brutal commander and a badly treated inmate. The commander accused the inmate of not appreciating the freedom and liberation that communism had brought to the country. The weakened inmate replied that he had no freedom at all — and, with that perceived insult, the commander proceeded to beat him savagely. Powerful and aggressive ideologies of the last couple of centuries have had as their goal the improvement of society — that is, the common good. Robert Owen (1771–1858) was one of the founders of the socialist movement and had as his aim the alleviation of poverty. He laid it down that no one is responsible for his own will and behaviour, and is entirely formed by his external factors. So, he decided, the common good of society involved shaping individuals by a properly constructed environment. Of course, in such a view of the common good it is a short step towards tyranny. With the appearance of Karl Marx’s master work, Das Kapital (1848), the sad story of communism began. The common good — in its Marxist understanding — was the prize ahead, and untold suffering for untold numbers resulted. But there was at this time a very different notion of the common good. Capitalism understood itself as based on full freedom, especially in the use of one’s goods. It held that each person has the right to own and use his property as he deems fit and the state ought desist from interference. Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) held that rational self-interest in a free-market economy leads to economic well-being. Economic development was best fostered in an environment of free competition. But so bad did the practical result of this view become during the Industrial Revolution, that untold numbers of workers lived lives of terrible misery. They were at the mercy of those who had complete freedom in the use of their capital. All that mattered was production and profit. The great papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) was in large measure a rebuttal of this laissez-faire capitalism.

I say all this as an introduction to what our Lord teaches in today’s Gospel, for it has direct implications for our understanding of the common good and the way society is to attain it. The result of so much of social and economic theory and practice of the last two and a half centuries has been the denial of the proper fulfilment of very many groups and individuals. It has resulted in tremendous abuses of authority and power, bringing misery and the denial of rights to those groups and individuals. Indeed, those groups have at times constituted the majority of the state. Russia was a religious nation, and nearly a century ago the Bolsheviks, with their notion of what was good for society — the common good, that is — seized power and over the course of decades wreaked great violence on the adherents of religion. We read that Jesus called his disciples together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials impose authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” The common good is attained by a profound spirit of service. By the common good is meant the total of those conditions of social life which allow people as groups and individuals to reach their proper fulfilment. It involves respect for and promotion of the fundamental rights of the person, the development of the spiritual and temporal goods of persons and of society, and it involves the peace and security of all. All men and women according to the place that they occupy participate in promoting this common good. They do this by respecting just laws and taking charge of the areas for which they have personal responsibility — such as the care of their own family and the commitment to their own work. They are also called, and should be free to, take an active part in public life as far as possible. All of this constitutes the true common good. For all of this, society needs a proper understanding of man and a model of service to man.

Now, where is this understanding and this model to be found? Jesus Christ is the model for every man of what it is to live a life of service. As we heard in the Gospel, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10: 35-45). How far from the example of Jesus Christ have been very many theories of society and of the common good! Let us take Jesus Christ and what he has revealed of the nature and destiny of man as our inspiration for our service to society and our understanding of the common good. The implications for the common good of Christ’s person and teaching are extensively developed in the Church’s great social teaching, extending from Rerum Novarum already mentioned, through the various social Encyclicals since then, and including Caritas in Veritate of Benedict XVI. In our concern for the common good of society let us make it our business to be imbued with the person and example of Jesus Christ and nourished by the Church’s teaching.
                                                                           (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1905-1917 (common good)

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Apostolic zeal is a divine craziness I want you to have. Its symptoms are: hunger to know the Master; constant concern for souls; perseverance that nothing can shake.
                                                          (The Way, no.934)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Third Chapter   BEWARE VAIN AND WORLDLY KNOWLEDGE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

The time will come when Christ, the Teacher of teachers, the Lord of angels, will appear to hear the lessons of all -- that is, to examine the conscience of everyone. Then He will search Jerusalem with lamps and the hidden things of darkness will be brought to light and the arguings of men's tongues be silenced.
                                                                       (Continuing)

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Here is a passage from John Henry Newman’s sermon ‘Unreal Words.’ Here, Newman analyses what it means to speak in an ‘unreal’ way, and shows how this can apply to religious beliefs. Do we, like the Apostles sometimes ‘not know what we are asking’ (cf. Mark 10: 38)?

Of course it is very common in all matters, not only in religion, to speak in an unreal way; viz., when we speak on a subject with which our minds are not familiar. If you were to hear a person who knew nothing about military matters, giving directions how soldiers on service should conduct themselves, or how their food and lodging, or their marching, was to be duly arranged, you would be sure that his mistakes would be such as to excite the ridicule and contempt of men experienced in warfare. … If a dim-sighted man were to attempt to decide questions of proportion and colour, or a man without ear to judge of musical compositions, we should feel that he spoke on and from general principles, on fancy, or by deduction and argument, not from a real apprehension of the matters which he discussed. His remarks would be theoretical and unreal.

This unsubstantial way of speaking is instanced in the case of persons who fall into any new company among strange faces and amid novel occurrences. They sometimes form amiable judgments of men and things, sometimes the reverse,—but whatever their judgments be, they are to those who know the men and the things strangely unreal and distorted. They feel reverence where they should not; they discern slights where none were intended; they discover meaning in events which have none; they fancy motives; they misinterpret manner; they mistake character; and they form generalizations and combinations which exist only in their own minds.

Again, persons who have not attended to the subject of morals, or to politics, or to matters ecclesiastical, or to theology, do not know the relative value of questions which they meet with in these departments of knowledge. They do not understand the difference between one point and another. The one and the other are the same to them. They look at them as infants gaze at the objects which meet their eyes, in a vague unapprehensive way, as if not knowing whether a thing is a hundred miles off or close at hand, whether great or small, hard or soft. They have no means of judging, no standard to measure by,—and they give judgment at random, saying yea or nay on very deep questions, according as their fancy is struck at the moment, or as some clever or specious argument happens to come across them. Consequently they are inconsistent; say one thing one day, another the next;—and if they must act, act in the dark; or if they can help acting, do not act; or if they act freely, act from some other reason not avowed. All this is to be unreal. [...]

And in like manner as regards religious emotions. Persons are aware from the mere force of the doctrines of which the Gospel consists, that they ought to be variously affected, and deeply and intensely too, in consequence of them. The doctrines of original and actual sin, of Christ’s Divinity and Atonement, and of Holy Baptism, are so vast, that no one can realize them without very complicated and profound feelings. Natural reason tells a man this, and that if he simply and genuinely believes the doctrines, he must have these feelings; and he professes to believe the doctrines absolutely, and therefore he professes the correspondent feelings. But in truth he perhaps does not really believe them absolutely, because such absolute belief is the work of long time, and therefore his profession of feeling outruns the real inward existence of feeling, or he becomes unreal. Let us never lose sight of two truths,—that we ought to have our hearts penetrated with the love of Christ and full of self-renunciation; but that if they be not, professing that they are does not make them so.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol 5 (1840) Sermon no. 3, p. 34-36, 38-39)

Monday of the twenty ninth week in Ordinary Time

(October 19) Saint John de Brébeuf and Saint Isaac Jogues, priests and martyrs, and their companions, martyrs
   Isaac Jogues (1607-1646): Isaac Jogues and his companions were the first martyrs of the North American continent officially recognized by the Church. As a young Jesuit, Isaac Jogues, a man of learning and culture, taught literature in France. He gave up that career to work among the Huron Indians in the New World, and in 1636 he and his companions, under the leadership of John de Brébeuf, arrived in Quebec. The Hurons were constantly warred upon by the Iroquois, and in a few years Father Jogues was captured by the Iroquois and imprisoned for 13 months. His letters and journals tell how he and his companions were led from village to village, how they were beaten, tortured and forced to watch as their Huron converts were mangled and killed. An unexpected chance for escape came to Isaac Jogues through the Dutch, and he returned to France, bearing the marks of his sufferings. Several fingers had been cut, chewed or burnt off. Pope Urban VIII gave him permission to offer Mass with his mutilated hands: "It would be shameful that a martyr of Christ be not allowed to drink the Blood of Christ." Welcomed home as a hero, Father Jogues might have sat back, thanked God for his safe return and died peacefully in his homeland. But his zeal led him back once more to the fulfillment of his dreams. In a few months he sailed for his missions among the Hurons. In 1646 he and Jean de Lalande, who had offered his services to the missioners, set out for Iroquois country in the belief that a recently signed peace treaty would be observed. They were captured by a Mohawk war party, and on October 18 Father Jogues was tomahawked and beheaded. Jean de Lalande was killed the next day at Ossernenon, a village near Albany, New York.
   The first of the Jesuit missionaries to be martyred was René Goupil who, with Lalande, had offered his services as an oblate. He was tortured along with Isaac Jogues in 1642, and was tomahawked for having made the Sign of the Cross on the brow of some children. Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649): Jean de Brébeuf was a French Jesuit who came to Canada at the age of 32 and laboured there for 24 years. He went back to France when the English captured Quebec (1629) and expelled the Jesuits, but returned to his missions four years later. Although medicine men blamed the Jesuits for a smallpox epidemic among the Hurons, Jean remained with them. He composed catechisms and a dictionary in Huron, and saw 7,000 converted before his death. He was captured by the Iroquois and died after four hours of extreme torture at Sainte Marie, near Georgian Bay, Canada. Father Anthony Daniel, working among Hurons who were gradually becoming Christian, was killed by Iroquois on July 4, 1648. His body was thrown into his chapel, which was set on fire. Gabriel Lalemant had taken a fourth vow—to sacrifice his life to the Indians. He was horribly tortured to death along with Father Brébeuf. Father Charles Garnier was shot to death as he baptized children and catechumens during an Iroquois attack. Father Noel Chabanel was killed before he could answer his recall to France. He had found it exceedingly hard to adapt to mission life. He could not learn the language, the food and life of the Indians revolted him, plus he suffered spiritual dryness during his whole stay in Canada. Yet he made a vow to remain until death in his mission. These eight Jesuit martyrs of North America were canonized in 1930.
   "My confidence is placed in God who does not need our help for accomplishing his designs. Our single endeavour should be to give ourselves to the work and to be faithful to him, and not to spoil his work by our shortcomings" (from a letter of Isaac Jogues to a Jesuit friend in France, September 12, 1646, a month before he died). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Romans 4:20-25; Luke 1:69-75; Luke 12:13-21 

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Jesus replied, Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you? Then he said to them, Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And he told them this parable: The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich towards God. (Luke 12: 13-21)

Material possessions     A professorship of political economy at Oxford was established in 1825, with Nassau William Senior as the first professor. He was followed by his old university tutor, Richard Whately who shortly afterwards was appointed Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. That founding of the Oxford professorship we may take as symbolic of the modern rise of the discipline of economics. With its foundations in moral philosophy, political economy originally was the term for the study of production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states — hence “political economy.” Karl Marx understood history to consist of the struggle between opposing classes over mastery of the economy. In the late nineteenth century, the term "political economy" was generally replaced by the term “economics,” often used by those seeking to place the study of economy upon mathematical bases, rather than the relationships of production and consumption. So it is that economics is a principal discipline of the modern age. Business Studies is a popular elective at the final level of Secondary School, while Economics and Commerce remains ever strong at Universities. The combined Law/Economics degree has a high entrance requirement. The principal minister of Government after the Prime Minister is often the Treasurer or his equivalent, and a dominant Government department is the Treasury. The world pulsates with the importance of the economy — which is to say, with the importance of maximizing the availability of money and material goods for the short and long term. An observer of the modern world would be forgiven for gaining the impression that what matters most in the lives of human beings is money-making and the possession or control of material goods. But a little philosophical reflection ought dispel any conviction that this is as it should be, widespread though it might be. The fact is that money and material goods are manifestly ephemeral and profoundly vulnerable.

Yes, indeed. If an individual’s life and work has been directed towards economic goals alone or principally, he has spent his efforts on what can and (ultimately) will pass uncontrollably through his fingers. As it has always been said, you cannot take it with you. Because of divine revelation we know that there is a Hereafter, and we know a good deal about it. Ordinary common sense would suggest that our lives ought be spent working for what we will be able to retain — forever. Our economic interests and goals ought be sought only within this ultimate perspective. This common sense consideration brings us to our Gospel today, in which our Lord is asked a very practical question by a person in his audience. “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” How common is this problem, the matter of the Will! The point here, though, is that our Lord uses the occasion to drive home a few simple and central points for human life. “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Many have made their life to consist in the abundance of possessions, so as even to lead them into a variety of forms of theft on a massive scale. It has been argued that the great economic problem of 2009 was ultimately an ethical failure due to a rapacious desire for profits. A man’s life does not consist simply in possessions, let alone an abundance of possessions. He must have the use of some things, but those things ought be oriented towards the truly central goals of human flourishing. At the heart of the flowering of the human person is love — loving and being loved — and ultimately this is achieved in the love of God. Material goods and prosperity ought support and assist the attainment of the love and service of God. This applies to the life of the individual as well as to the life of society. It is this which a man takes with him, and if he cannot take this, he takes nothing. For all his labour and his talents, he goes from this life with everything having slipped through his fingers.

Our Lord tells the parable of the man who built large barns for his abundant possessions. But it was all so very vulnerable. He was about to lose it all, for “God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich towards God”(Luke 12: 13-21). Let us heed our Lord’s words and make the love and service of God the great goal of every day, with the business of material security and prosperity serving that one all-important aim.
                                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

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Don't rest on your laurels. If, humanly speaking, that attitude is neither comfortable nor becoming, what will it be when — as now — the laurels are not really yours, but God's?
                                             (The Way, no.935)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Third Chapter    BEWARE VAIN AND WORLDLY KNOWLEDGE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

am He Who in one moment so enlightens the humble mind that it comprehends more of eternal truth than could be learned by ten years in the schools. I teach without noise of words or clash of opinions, without ambition for honour or confusion of argument.
                                             (Continuing)

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If the Church is to be regal, a witness for Heaven, unchangeable amid secular changes, if in every age she is to hold her own, and proclaim as well as profess the truth, if she is to thrive without or against the civil power, if she is to be resourceful and self-recuperative under all fortunes, she must be more than Holy and Apostolic; she must be Catholic.

                      JHN, from the ‘Preface to the Third Edition’ of the Prophetical Office of the Church (1877)

Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE INTERNAL CONSOLATION

Wednesday of the thirtieth week in Ordinary Time B-2

Scripture today:   Ephesians 6: 1-9;    Psalm 144;     Luke 13: 22-30

Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" He said to them, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' "But he will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.' "Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.' "But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!' "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last." (Luke 13: 22-30)

Struggle to enter!    There have been doctrinal “earthquakes” in the Christian world, just as there have been earthquakes in the material, physical world. Perhaps the first such doctrinal “earthquake” occurred in the fourth century. That earthquake was Arianism. The Alexandrian priest Arius declared that Christ, the Son of God did not always exist, but was created by—and is therefore distinct from and inferior to—God the Father. Appealing to Christ’s statement that “the Father is greater than I,” he claimed that the Son was not unbegotten. Speaking of the criticism he was attracting, he wrote that “we are persecuted because we say that the Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning” (Letter from Arius to the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia). So, of course, Christ was not God. This heresy, condemned at Nicea and subsequently, struck at the deepest nerve of the Christian religion, for it denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. There were various storms across the centuries following Arius, including the gradual separation of the Eastern Church from the See of Rome. But the next great doctrinal earthquake occurred with the declarations of the Augustinian priest Martin Luther, followed by the writings of John Calvin. A central doctrine in their system was that God's pardon for sinners is granted to and received through faith alone, understood as excluding all "works." Christ's righteousness is imputed (i.e., attributed) by God to the believing sinner. Luther and Calvin excluded all human works (except the works of Jesus Christ, which form the basis of justification) from the pardon of justification. So "faith alone" ― sola fide ― is a foundation of Protestantism. According to Martin Luther, justification by faith alone is the article on which the Church stands or falls. Justification is entirely the work of God. Now, this doctrine can actually be interpreted in a way that is close to Catholic doctrine, but as it was understood and promoted in the sixteenth century, and perceived by the Catholic Church, it was explicitly condemned by the Council of Trent. Trent insisted that justification is preserved and increased through good works. Both grace and the effort of man ― his “works” ― were necessary for sanctification, which is not just “attributed.” We must “work” at our salvation in fear and trembling, as St Paul writes.

In our Gospel today (Luke 13: 22-30) our Lord directs that we “struggle” to enter through the “narrow door” (agonizesthe eiselthein dia tees stenees thuras) The Greek word which Matthew uses for “struggle” or “strive” is agonizesthe, and it is imperative. It is not just a suggestion, an invitation or a mere indicative. It is imperative for the disciple and the one who is to enter the kingdom of God that he “struggle” to enter. The struggle that is involved in agonizesthe is like that of engaging in an athletic contest. It involves dread. All of one’s powers are at work in order to succeed. It is to fight, to struggle, to strive. It is like a tremendous wrestling match or fight, in which one struggles against the opponent. In the command to enter by the narrow gate (eiselthate dia tees stenes pulees) as reported by St Matthew (7:12-14) in his Sermon on the Mount, this word to “struggle” is not used. It is reported by Luke and seems meant to bring out Christ’s meaning more clearly. The disciple must actively grapple with all difficulties to the best of his powers so as to enter by the narrow door. In St Luke’s account of Christ’s greatest struggle, his Passion, the word appears again, this time as the noun. In the Garden, Christ kneels down and prays that the cup be removed from him. He was in an agoonia, and prayed the more earnestly (Luke 22: 42-44). The contest was great and his sweat appeared as drops of blood that fell to the earth. Christ was in a fight, and he was striving to prevail ― and an angel of the Lord appeared to him supporting him in the struggle. He was fighting against his revulsion at all that was soon to come, grappling to the point of death ― and in the struggle, in the agoonia, he conquered. The word is not used in Matthew’s account of the episode in the Garden (26: 38-44), nor is it used in Mark (14: 33-40) whose account is closer to Matthew’s anyway. Nor is it used by John in his account (18:1-12). Perhaps Luke, writing for a more overtly Gentile and Greek readership, used this word to convey the notion of “struggle” more vividly. The point is that in Christ’s command in our Gospel today, we have much “work” to do in entering the kingdom of heaven. We must struggle as in a mortal contest, grappling with opponents that mean to prevail over us. Our model is Christ, who struggled and prevailed.

When an Anglican, John Henry Newman was challenged by the Evangelical Samuel Wilberforce (before he became Bishop of Oxford) over his lack of emphasis, in his sermons, on the all-important work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life. Newman replied by saying that the work of the Holy Spirit was absolutely essential and it was presumed in his sermons. What was commonly lacking, he replied, was an emphasis on what we must do if the work of the Holy Spirit was to have its effect. Grace works in and through our own efforts, initiating them, sustaining them, bringing them to their end. But we must struggle and strive. Let us do that, then!

                                                                        (E.J.Tyler)