August1 in Year A 11

Monday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time to Monday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time

Click on any date to go to the Thought for that Day

Morning Offering: O Jesus, through the most pure heart of Mary, I offer you all the prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of your divine heart, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass. I offer them especially for the Holy Father's intentions:

Pope Benedict's general intention for August is: "That the World Youth Day taking place in Madrid may encourage all the young people of the world to root and found their lives in Christ. "

His mission intention is: "That Christians of the West, docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, may re-encounter the freshness and enthusiasm of their faith".

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Entrance Antiphon: Ps 70 (69): 2, 6 O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me! You are my rescuer, my help; O Lord, do not delay.

Collect: Draw near to your servants, O Lord, and answer their prayers with unceasing kindness, that, for those who glory in you as their Creator and guide, you may restore what you have created and keep safe what you have restored. 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.

Moral theology, Vatican II said, should be more thoroughly nourished by Scripture, and show the nobility of the Christian vocation of the faithful and their obligation to bring forth fruit in charity for the life of the world. Alphonsus, declared patron of moral theologians St Alphonsus Ligouri

by Pius XII in 1950, would rejoice in that statement. In his day, he fought for the liberation of moral theology from the rigidity of Jansenism. His moral theology, which went through 60 editions in the century following him, concentrated on the practical and concrete problems of pastors and confessors. If a certain legalism and minimalism crept into moral theology, it should not be attributed to this model of moderation and gentleness. At the University of Naples he received, at the age of 16, a doctorate in both canon and civil law by acclamation, but soon gave up the practice of law for apostolic activity. He was ordained a priest and concentrated his pastoral efforts on popular (parish) missions, hearing confessions, forming Christian groups. He founded the Redemptorist congregation in 1732. It was an association of priests and brothers living a common life, dedicated to the imitation of Christ, and working mainly in popular missions for peasants in rural areas. Almost as an omen of what was to come later, he found himself deserted, after a while, by all his original companions except one lay brother. But the congregation managed to survive and was formally approved 17 years later, though its troubles were not over. Alphonsus’ great pastoral reforms were in the pulpit and confessional—replacing the pompous oratory of the time with simplicity, and the rigorism of Jansenism with kindness. His great fame as a writer has somewhat eclipsed the fact that for 26 years he travelled up and down the Kingdom of Naples, preaching popular missions. He was made bishop (after trying to reject the honour) at 66 and at once instituted a thorough reform of his diocese. His greatest sorrow came toward the end of his life. The Redemptorists, precariously continuing after the suppression of the Jesuits, had difficulty in getting their Rule approved by the Kingdom of Naples. Alphonsus acceded to the condition that they possess no property in common, but a royal official, with the connivance of a high Redemptorist official, changed the Rule substantially. Alphonsus, old, crippled and with very bad sight, signed the document, unaware that he had been betrayed. The Redemptorists in the Papal States then put themselves under the pope, who withdrew those in Naples from the jurisdiction of Alphonsus. It was only after his death that the branches were united. At 71 he was afflicted with rheumatic pains which left incurable bending of his neck; until it was straightened a little, the pressure of his chin caused a raw wound on his chest. He suffered a final 18 months of “dark night” scruples, fears, temptations against every article of faith and every virtue, interspersed with intervals of light and relief, when ecstasies were frequent. Alphonsus is best known for his moral theology, but he also wrote well in the field of spiritual and dogmatic theology. His Glories of Mary is one of the great works on that subject, and his book Visits to the Blessed Sacrament went through 40 editions in his lifetime, greatly influencing the practice of this devotion in the Church. St. Alphonsus was known above all as a practical man who dealt in the concrete rather than the abstract. His life is indeed a “practical” model for the everyday Christian who has difficulty recognizing the dignity of Christian life amid the swirl of problems, pain, misunderstanding and failure. Alphonsus suffered all these things. He is a saint because he was able to maintain an intimate sense of the presence of the suffering Christ through it all. Someone once remarked, after a sermon by Alphonsus, "It is a pleasure to listen to your sermons; you forget yourself and preach Jesus Christ." (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Numbers 11: 4-15; Psalm 80; Matthew 14: 22-36 (used in Year A)

Jesus made the disciples get into a boat and precede him to the other side of the sea, while he dismissed the crowds. After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone. Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles Shroud of Turin

offshore, was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified. “It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear. At once Jesus spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” After they got into the boat, the wind died down. Those who were in the boat did him homage, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.” After making the crossing, they came to land at Gennesaret. When the men of that place recognized him, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought to him all those who were sick and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak, and as many as touched it were healed. (Matthew 14:22-36)

God’s will Let us notice one word in this passage, a word from which everything else in the passage flows. The word is, “made” — Jesus “made” the disciples embark and go ahead. The incidents being described here follow immediately on the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand with the five loaves and two fishes. In his Gospel (John 6: 14-15), St John tells us that this miracle was a sensation. The crowds began to speak of Jesus as the prophet who was to come into the world, and our Lord could see that they would try to acclaim him as king. Our text from Matthew does not mention this, except that our Lord, once the miracle was over, immediately (eutheoos) made his disciples enter their boat and leave for the other side. Mark in his Gospel tells us the same (6:45 — euthus). Let us note here, though, that Jesus “made” them go. The word Matthew uses to express our Lord’s directive is “eenagkasen” — it means “constrained” or “compelled” — a strong form of command. Mark uses the same word, in the same tense: Jesus “made” the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead. So they had no choice, and it was to be immediate. In St John’s account things are narrated a little differently. Jesus withdrew to a mountain to pray, and at evening the disciples got into their boat to cross the Lake for Capernaum (6:15-17). Presumably it was evening by the time the feeding of the crowds was over, and while our Lord went up the mountain, at his instruction the disciples left for Capernaum. The detail I wish to highlight is that both Matthew and Mark state that the disciples left our Lord and headed out on the Lake at his specific and strong command. So out they went, on their own — and got into enormous difficulties. The accounts of both Matthew and Mark are closely parallel. Both tell us that the boat was in the midst of the sea, while Jesus was far away on the mountain in prayer. Matthew writes that the boat was “being distressed (basanizomenon) by the waves for the wind was contrary,” while Mark tells us that Jesus “seeing them distressed (autous basanizomenous) in the rowing, for the wind was contrary,” came to them. Both tell us that it was about the fourth watch of the night. St John tells us that it was “a great wind,” and they were about twenty-five or thirty furlongs out in the Lake (John 6:18-19). All this happened because of Jesus’ command.

On an earlier occasion in Matthew’s Gospel (8: 25), the disciples found themselves in the midst of a terrible storm in the Lake, but then they had Jesus with them. Fishermen that they were, they could see that they were in mortal danger — and Jesus was asleep in the boat, exhausted by his unremitting ministry. They forcibly awoke him, pleading that he do something — and at a word he reduced the raging storm to a silent calm. But this time (Matthew 14: 22-36) they were on their own and they were in their predicament precisely because of the strong command of our Lord. He had “constrained” them to go on ahead, without him. This is surely a lesson for all disciples of Jesus Christ, and indeed for all the children of God who are intent on doing the will of their Father in heaven. The will of God can be manifest in a variety of ways: the requirements of our situation or calling in life, the legitimate commands of superiors, even the impositions of unjust persons — all these situations can indicate what it is that God permits or wants of us, and they can involve immense difficulty. It is commonly said that suffering and evil constitute the greatest obstacle to faith in God. It is “the problem of evil.” People abandon God and faith in his revelation precisely because of the sufferings they are required by life’s course to undergo. How could a good God permit this? There is no doubt that suffering and difficulty can have this effect, but what was the upshot of the difficulties into which the disciples found themselves, precisely because of what our Lord commanded them to do? The final upshot was a greater faith and a greater appropriation of divine revelation. The entire, ugly incident resulted in Christ coming to them across the water and their perceiving with even greater clarity who he was: “Truly your are the Son of God!” Of course, this greater faith was occasioned by the miracle of our Lord coming to them across the water amid the turgid waves. The point to notice, though, is that the general result of their difficulties was their attainment, in a greater measure, of the principal goal of life. That goal is faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Christ sent them into difficulties, but he had a plan for them that surpassed all the difficulties. So it is with each of us. So we should trust him.

God places us in this world and each of us has a course ahead with all the difficulties that this will involve. We are in the hands of God. The one thing necessary is that we do what the disciples did when our Lord commanded them to leave — we must do what God wants, whatever be the difficulties that may follow. Those difficulties will, in God’s plan, have their place in his plan. Let us always trust him. He will lead us on. If we suffer with Christ we shall reign with him. If we die with him we shall rise with him. As he said to his disciples, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Let us take our stand with him, and ultimately all will be well.

Christian contentment In our first reading from the book of Numbers, the complaints of the children of Israel are described as well as God’s displeasure at them. They are complaining of the lack of variety. All they get from heaven is manna! They think back complainingly of what they used to eat when in Egypt. They are on their way from slavery to the promised land, and are being nourished by God from heaven with manna — but they are still not satisfied. Let us examine ourselves. There is an old saying that the other pastures always seem to be greener. We are on our way to the promised land of heaven, with much to look forward to and yet most of our lives we spend complaining. In the case of the Hebrews, God was not pleased with their complaining: “Moses heard the people wailing, every family at the door of its tent. The anger of the Lord flared out”. St Paul referred at various times to the sufferings he had to endure, but he also said that he had learnt to be content.

Let us strive to find joy in the discontent that must of necessity characterise this vale of tears. Our Lord said, “Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest ... for my yoke is easy and my burden light.” God means us to find joy in our everyday life, whatever be our sufferings.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You were in a place where they were talking and listening to music. Prayer welled up in your soul, bringing an unspeakable solace. In the end you said: “Jesus, I don’t want consolation; I want you.”

Entrance Antiphon: Ps 70 (69): 2, 6 O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me! You are my rescuer, my help; O Lord, do not delay.

Born in Sardinia at the beginning of the fourth century. He became a cleric at Rome and in the year 345 he was chosen to be the first Bishop of Vercelli. He spread the true faith by his preaching and he set up the monastic life in his diocese. He was sent into exile by the emperor Constantius and suffered much for the sake of the faith. When he returned to his own country he worked unceasingly for the restoration of religion against the Arian heresy. He died at Vercelli in the year 371.

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat! Jesus called the crowd to him and said, Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean', but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean'. Then the disciples came to him and asked, Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this? He replied, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit. (Matthew 15:1-2.10-14)

God must plant John Henry Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua came out in 1864. Not only did it demolish the original accusation which occasioned it (Kingsley’s strong insinuation that Newman was duplicitous), but it contributed towards the moral and intellectual respectability of Catholicism. Not long after its publication there appeared in the Frazer Magazine an attack on the book by Fitzjames Stephen, the prominent agnostic lawyer and (later) judge. Some years later the same Stephen published an attack on Fr. Ted Tyler

Newman’s later volume, his greatest philosophical work — A Grammar of Assent. To Stephen’s frustration, Newman refused to notice these attacks publicly, and certainly did not bother to answer them. While Newman’s two aforesaid works remain classics, Stephen’s critiques have long been forgotten. Not only did Newman think that Stephen misrepresented his position in so many ways that it was not worth trying to answer, but that Stephen’s starting points, the first principles of his thinking, were so profoundly at variance with Newman’s own, that a true discussion of the matters at issue was impossible. This touches on one of Newman’s contributions to the modern philosophy of knowledge. He insisted on the overriding importance of first principles, an importance greater than the thinking that follows on those first principles. He went on to say that debate on an issue is virtually pointless if first principles are impossibly divergent. Such was the case, he believed, between himself and the likes of the agnostic Fitzjames Stephen. He made several further points about the first principles or basic starting points of thought. Among them were two. Firstly, one’s basic assumptions are not just an intellectual matter. They flow from one’s moral character and position. They manifest a particular moral preference, inclination and stance. In basic matters, one’s thought manifests one’s moral stand. Further, one’s basic principles can be hidden from sight, be it one’s own sight or that of others. The beginnings of one’s thought can be lost from view and hence beyond one’s direct control. They are obscurely connected with one’s moral and spiritual position. How, then, can one gain the correct starting points? It is possible by asking God to grant them by his grace.

In our Gospel scene today our Lord is in the midst of his ministry in the Galilean region (he has just been to Gennesaret) and “some Pharisees and teachers of the law from Jerusalem” come to him. Of course, they regard themselves as the authorities on religious observance in the nation, and they quickly notice things which the disciples of Jesus were not doing. To begin with, the disciples fail to observe the established practices of ritual purity — they “do not wash their hands before they eat.” There were, of course, extensive stipulations in the Pentateuch on cleanliness in various situations of life, giving to such practices a religious dimension. This was interpreted by the religious leaders in their own fashion, and greatly extended to other areas of daily life. Their objection to what they saw in the behaviour of Christ’s disciples related not just to religious observance. It also related to their own position in the religious life of the nation. Their influence over the society depended on the religious acceptance of these teachings, and here was the famous young Rabbi of Galilee whom so many took to be a great prophet, disregarding it all. When Pilate received Christ to pronounce judgment on him, he could see that it was simply “envy” that led the religious leaders to hand him over for a death sentence. They envied his moral supremacy and authority as a teacher of the things of God. This, together with other causes of their blindness, was where they were coming from. They had basic first principles, starting points, fundamental assumptions that led them into a profound and implacable divergence from the Person and teaching of the Son of God made man. What does our Lord say to the crowds about the criticism of the scribes and Pharisees? He states a general principle that they had forgotten. “What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean', but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean'.” That is to say, what you think, say and do is what constitutes sinful uncleanness. What matters is what “comes out” of you, and this depends on the state of your heart. It is your moral condition which will make you “clean” or “unclean.”

Even more fundamentally, what is needed is for God himself, by his grace, to plant the foundations of your mind, heart, soul and life. “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” Our Lord’s opponents were blind. Their life did not have God’s action as its beginning. God did not do the planting in their case, so they were in the darkness, and bore bad fruit. Their starting points did not come from God, but from elsewhere, from sin and Self. The answer is to turn to God and ask that he, the sovereign Lord of all, plant the right starting points, the true first principles. As St Paul writes, let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Let us earnestly ask God to give to us the true foundation, which is Christ.

“Now Moses was the most humble of men, the humblest man on earth.” In the Book of Numbers, the people of Israel travel through the wilderness on their way to the promised land. The journey is dominated by the figure of Moses whom the Lord chose to draw into a remarkable intimacy with him. There was a very special directness in this relationship which marked Moses off from other prophets. God says in our passage that “If any man among you is a prophet I make myself known to him in a vision, I speak to him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses.... I speak with him face to face.” Moses was great in a variety of ways, but our passage today points out a very notable feature about him: he was particularly humble. Coupled with this, he loved those in difficulty and interceded earnestly for them before God. Let us note, though, his striking humility: he was “the most humble of men.” This, of course, points to Christ who is the pre-eminent exemplar of humility.

The spiritual masters teach that humility is the foundation of the spiritual life. Without it, then, the house is built on sand. Let us work on advancing daily in humility, with the grace of God as our stay. The same masters teach that we will advance in humility if, for love of Jesus, we accept being humiliated and placed in the lower position. In all this — as has been said — Christ is our great model, and the source of the grace to achieve it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your life must be a constant prayer, a never-ceasing conversation with Our Lord: when things are pleasant or unpleasant, easy or difficult, usual or unusual. In every situation, your conversation with your Father God should immediately come to life. You should seek him right within your soul.

Entrance Antiphon: Ps 70 (69): 2, 6 O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me! You are my rescuer, my help; O Lord, do not delay.

Anthony was born in Valencia, Spain. After he joined the Franciscans and was ordained, he decided to become a missionary. When the missionary college of Santa Cruz in Querétaro, Mexico, was organized, Anthony volunteered and was accepted. In 1683 he arrived in Vera Cruz and found that city had been devastated by a pirate attack. Life in the New World would not be easy. Anthony covered a wide territory in his 43 years in New Spain. He worked in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico and Texas. After serving as superior in Querétaro for 13 years, he established missionary colleges in Guatemala City and in Zacatecas, Mexico. Although Anthony was used to self-denial, missionary life provided plenty of mortification. He walked thousands of miles and showed great courage among hostile Indians. In 1716 missionaries from the Zacatecas college founded Misión Guadalupe in eastern Texas. Anthony himself established the missions of Dolores and San Miguel in that state. When war with Spain caused the French to invade east Texas in 1719, Anthony and his confreres withdrew to Misión San Antonio (later known as the Alamo), which had been set up the previous year. In 1720, he began Misión San José in San Antonio. Anthony died in Mexico City on August 6, 1726. In 1836 he was declared venerable.

Scripture today: Numbers 13: 1-2.25-14:1.26-29.34-35; Psalm 105; Matthew 15: 21-28

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession. Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us. He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. The woman came and knelt before him. Lord, help me! she said. He replied, It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs. Yes, Lord, she said, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered, Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed from that very hour. (Matthew 15: 21-28)

Mercy The most frustrating thing about the proposition that there is a God is that man can’t see him. He is not evident to us. Interestingly, Blessed John Henry Newman came close to saying that there is a sense in which he is evident to us — evident through the voice and intimations of the conscience. These intimations, he thought, are much closer to us than are our perceptions of the external world. In the sense that we are subject to duty we have a dim awareness of the transcendent moral Obliger who is God. Even so, this sense of a transcendent Obliger would seem not to be self-evident but the fruit of a form of rational reflection. Be that as it may, the point here is that God is not directly seen, heard, touched. In other words, he is distant — or so it would seem in the first instance. God, if he exists, is somewhere, but not near at hand. This tends to give man the impression that if there is a God, then he does not care very much about us. In many traditional and primal religions, the highest god performs his business of setting the world in motion. Then he withdraws to his own repose or higher interests. Man is left to deal with lesser deities who have certain powers but who, like the high god himself, are not particularly good and moral beings anyway. Heaven is not a particularly admirable place. The upshot of it all is that man tends to be left in his bleak plight without a lot of hope. He can (and does, in the religions) raise a lot of noise with his sacrifices and prayers to get the gods moving on his behalf, but not a lot can be expected. All up, man is in a painful situation, very subject to the vagaries of war, pestilence, floods and fire, and all else that leaves him like flotsam tossed about by the cruel sea. He cries out for mercy, pity, aid, relief. This, in large measure powers his religious life and it is unremitting. He looks above for something beyond the clouds to come down and fix things for him, because nothing at hand around him answers. From his heart man yearns not for a god who is somewhat more powerful than he, but for a God of boundless power and limitless mercy. It is mercy he yearns for, and the cry for mercy arises from all, chosen people and Gentile alike.

Yes, mercy is the cry of mankind, be they the chosen people of God, or the Gentile peoples. Our Gospel passage today (Matthew 15: 21-28) presents us with the Gentile cry for mercy, directed to the Son of David. Jesus has temporarily withdrawn from the land of the fathers and has gone incognito into Gentile territory. But incognito or not, he is quickly discovered by one who is desperate for divine aid. It suggests, incidentally, that however hidden God may be, the one who truly yearns for him will find him. But there he was, the Saviour being loudly announced by someone who had to have mercy shown her — her beloved daughter was in the clutches of the underworld. There was to be no refusal as far as she was concerned. Mercy, mercy, mercy was her shout. The Greek is direct: She shouted out: ekrazen. Her cry was, Have mercy on me: eleeson me. This, I would suggest, is the cry of mankind, and the driving force of much of religion. If man can be described as a “religious” animal, and not just a rational one, the wellsprings of his religion are his vulnerability to attack from around him and from below. He is prone to death and to misery, and he needs mercy from wherever it may be found. For the Canaanite woman, it was a stroke of unbelievably good fortune that the Son of David had unaccountably appeared in their midst. There was no doubt about him, as far as she was concerned — whereas there was plenty of doubt about the efficacy of her religion and her deities. So after him she went with her plea for mercy, and mercy she received. But notice our Lord’s initially stony response to her. It too spoke of mercy. Get rid of her, our Lord’s disciples were pleading. She is bothersome — grant her request and send her off. What did our Lord say? “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Mercy was the mission entrusted to him by the Father of mercies, by the God of all comfort, by him who is rich in mercy. He had come down from heaven to seek out the lost sheep. The divine bent was towards those in profound need, whether they knew it or not. It was precisely for those who were lost and who had strayed from the almighty care of the Father of all, that he had come.

The plea of the pagan woman for mercy was the plea of the two blind men (Matthew 9:27), of the man in the crowd who pleaded mercy for his son (Matthew 17:15) and of the two blind men at Jericho (Matthew 20:29). At the beginning of the celebration of every Mass, both celebrant and faithful use the prayer of the Canaanite woman in appealing for mercy: Lord have mercy!. The greatest of mercies is redemption from the malady of sin and being drawn into friendship with God. God’s mercy not only delivers man from many temporal miseries, but more importantly, it takes him to heaven. Let us make Mercy our plea, taking to heart the magnificent prayer of the pagan woman of today’s Gospel.

“Son of David, take pity on me. My daughter is tormented by a devil.” Consider the Canaanite woman who pursued our Lord to plead that he drive out the devil afflicting her daughter. She did not have the faith of the Hebrews. She did not live her life according to what God had revealed to Moses and the prophets. Just what her religious beliefs were we have no way of knowing, but she did believe in the goodness of Jesus and his power over the demons. Her very persistence with Jesus shows this. She knew he would be patient with her, compassionate, and that he could do what she was asking of him. Jesus tested her faith and loved her for the faith she showed: “Woman, you have great faith. Let your wish be granted.” Every day we associate with people who hardly know Christ at all. They do not share our faith, and they are in various levels of need. They have no one to turn to. Let us speak to them of Christ if there is the opportunity, pointing to him as one who is all-powerful. Who knows! They may turn to him in their need as did the Canaanite woman. She learnt of Jesus from someone. It may be God’s plan to hear their prayer, as did our Lord the prayer of the Canaanite woman. God will be glorified and perhaps such a person may find faith in our Lord, if they are helped to turn to him in their need.

The problem so often is that we ourselves do not have sufficient faith in our Lord to speak of him, of his love and power, to others — especially to those who do not know him at all. There are a lot of people who are in need out there in the world. Christ is the answer to their need.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To recollect oneself in prayer, in meditation, is so easy! Jesus doesn’t make us wait. He doesn’t leave us in the waiting-room. It is he who does the waiting. You only have to say “Lord, I want to pray, I want to talk to you!” and you are at once in God’s presence, talking to him. And as if this were not enough, he doesn’t begrudge you his time. He leaves it up to you, just as you please. And not just for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, but for hours and hours! For the whole day! And he is who he is: the Almighty, the Most Wise.

Entrance Antiphon: Ps 70 (69): 2, 6 O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me! You are my rescuer, my help; O Lord, do not delay.

A man with vision overcomes obstacles and performs deeds that seem impossible. John Vianney was a man with vision: He wanted to become a priest. But he had to overcome his meagre formal schooling, which inadequately prepared him for seminary studies. His St John Vianney

failure to comprehend Latin lectures forced him to discontinue. But his vision of being a priest urged him to seek private tutoring. After a lengthy battle with the books, John was ordained. Situations calling for “impossible” deeds followed him everywhere. As pastor of the parish at Ars, John encountered people who were indifferent and quite comfortable with their style of living. His vision led him through severe fasts and short nights of sleep. (Some devils can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.) With Catherine Lassagne and Benedicta Lardet, he established La Providence, a home for girls. Only a man of vision could have such trust that God would provide for the spiritual and material needs of all those who came to make La Providence their home. His work as a confessor is John Vianney’s most remarkable accomplishment. In the winter months he was to spend 11 to 12 hours daily reconciling people with God. In the summer months this time was increased to 16 hours. Unless a man was dedicated to his vision of a priestly vocation, he could not have endured this giving of self day after day. Many people look forward to retirement and taking it easy, doing the things they always wanted to do but never had the time. But John Vianney had no thoughts of retirement. As his fame spread, more hours were consumed in serving God’s people. Even the few hours he would allow himself for sleep were disturbed frequently by the devil. Who, but a man with vision, could keep going with ever-increasing strength? In 1929, Pope Pius XI named him the patron of parish priests worldwide. Recommending liturgical prayer, John Vianney would say, “Private prayer is like straw scattered here and there: If you set it on fire it makes a lot of little flames. But gather these straws into a bundle and light them, and you get a mighty fire, rising like a column into the sky; public prayer is like that.” (AmericanCatholic.org)

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say the Son of Man is? They replied, Shroud of Turin

Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But what about you? he asked. Who do you say I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ. From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Never, Lord! he said. This shall never happen to you! Jesus turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men. (Matthew 16: 13-23)

The Rock As is well known, the Catholic Church does not base its formal and binding teaching on Scriptural texts alone. For instance, the mere fact that in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St John, Christ publicly declares that “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” and that “whoever eats me will live because of me” (John 6:55-57), is not the only determiner of the Catholic dogma on the Eucharist. Just as important is the Church’s formal Tradition on the point. The Church has always, from its beginning (prior to the writings of the New Testament), taught its doctrine on the Eucharist. The testimony of the Gospels — which writings postdate the commencement of the Church’s Tradition — is the inspired written expression of this. The Church knows what Christ meant to teach and has always known it, for it is an essential part of her Tradition. It was out of this Tradition that the inspired Gospels came. Thus the faithful, with the Scriptures in hand, read the inspired word with the mind of the Church, which is to say within the Church’s Tradition. That Tradition is itself the fruit of the guidance of the Spirit of God through the centuries of the Church’s life. However, I have at times heard it said that because it is the defined teaching of the Church which authoritatively determines what doctrines are divinely revealed, particular Scriptural passages cannot be taken as necessarily being expressions of those defined doctrines. That is to say, while the Catholic knows that Christ taught the doctrine of the Eucharist because the Church has declared this to be a point of divine faith, he cannot point to particular Gospel texts as necessarily expressing that very doctrine. Now this is a misapprehension. The Church has left a wide space for the private judgment of readers of the Scriptures, provided they read within the life and tradition of the Church. However, on some texts the Church has formally pronounced their true meaning. Our subject here is not the doctrine of the Eucharist, but this text of the Gospel of St Matthew today. It is a pivotal text and it tells of the founding of Christ’s Church. Here, Christ goes beyond his preaching on the Kingdom to announce that he will build his Church. Further, he will build it on Simon, his visible Rock.

The point here is not just the plain meaning of this inspired text (Matthew 16: 13-23), accessible to the private judgment of the reader. That plain meaning is that Christ intends to build his Church. Access to the Kingdom about which he has been so relentlessly preaching is available through his Church. To enter the Kingdom, one enters the Church he will build. Where is this Church? It is where Peter is, because Christ built it on Simon, its Rock. You are Peter (su ei Petros), and on this Rock (petra) I will build my Church... I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven...” The meaning is plain. But this is not the only reason why the faithful may know with certitude the objective meaning of this pivotal text. The fact is that the Church has formally declared its meaning in an Ecumenical Council: the First Vatican Council of 1869-1870. That is to say, the Church has declared that the obvious meaning of this Gospel text is part of the Tradition of the Church. One need not simply rely on private judgment to know what the text objectively means. One can count on the formal, divinely-guided Tradition of the Church, not only to know the actual doctrine of Christ on the Church and on the place of Peter in it, but also to know the meaning of this particular Gospel text on the matter. The Church has not taken this step of formally pronouncing on a particular Gospel text in a lot of cases — but she has done so in some. Our Gospel text today is one such. Where does the Church make this declaration? The First Vatican Council began in 1869, and its fourth Session was held in the following year, 1870. That session proclaimed the "First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ" on 18 July 1870. In Chapter 1 of this "Constitution on the Church," our Gospel passage today is quoted. Its meaning is declared to be “absolutely manifest” and always understood by the Catholic church. It then states that if anyone says that Peter the Apostle was not appointed by Christ to be head of all the Apostles and visible head of the whole Church, and that he was granted true jurisdiction over the Church, let him be anathema. What I am saying is that it is possible to know the objective meaning of particular texts of the Gospels with certitude, and that this meaning at times is stipulated in Catholic teaching. In such a case, Tradition declares on the meaning of Gospel texts.

Our Gospel text today is a key text in the Gospel of St Matthew. Christ passes from the Kingdom to the Church and points to the Church as his own creation. The Church will be the locale and bearer of the Kingdom, and in the Church will be found the keys to enter that Kingdom. He entrusts the keys to Simon whom he declares to be the Church’s visible Rock, the visible vicar or representative of himself who is the unseen Rock of the Church. The Twelve share with Simon the holding of the keys, but it is Simon above all to whom they are entrusted. He is Peter, and those keys are passed on to his successors, with whom all Christ’s disciples are called to be in communion. Let us ponder long and lovingly on Christ’s words in today’s Gospel.

“Then in full view of them, order this rock to give water.” The power of judgment is man’s glory. But in religion, there is the temptation to make our own private judgment the foundation of living according to what God has revealed. This was what was behind Cardinal Newman’s statement that the essence of religion is authority and obedience: in religion we live in obedience to God’s authority. In the first reading from the book of Numbers, Moses was ordered by God to answer the people’s demand for water by ordering the rock to give water: “in full view of them, order this rock to give water. You will make water flow for them out of the rock”. But Moses, when the moment came, doubted God’s word, and interposed his own judgment: he “raised his hand and struck the rock twice with the branch”. He did not believe as he should have, and acted according to his own judgment to help the process along. He acted not on faith but on his own private judgment. For his lack of faith he was punished with not being allowed to enter the Promised Land.

Let us resolve to live by faith in what God has revealed as it comes to us through and in the Church's teaching — and not just by private judgment and by sight.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the interior life, as in human love, we have to persevere. You have to meditate often on the same themes, keeping on until you re-discover an old discovery. “How could I not have seen this so clearly before?” you’ll ask in surprise. Simply because sometimes we’re like stones, that let the water flow over them, without absorbing a drop. That’s why we have to go over the same things again and again — because they aren’t the same things — if we want to soak up God’s blessings.

Entrance Antiphon: Ps 70 (69): 2, 6 O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me! You are my rescuer, my help; O Lord, do not delay.

First raised at the order of Pope Liberius in the mid-fourth century, the Liberian basilica was rebuilt by St Mary Major Basilica

Pope Sixtus III shortly after the Council of Ephesus affirmed Mary’s title as Mother of God in 431. Rededicated at that time to the Mother of God, St. Mary Major is the largest church in the world honouring God through Mary. Standing atop one of Rome’s seven hills, the Esquiline, it has survived many restorations without losing its character as an early Roman basilica. Its interior retains three naves divided by colonnades in the style of Constantine’s era. Fifth-century mosaics on its walls testify to its antiquity. St. Mary Major is one of the four Roman basilicas known as patriarchal cathedrals in memory of the first centres of the Church. St. John Lateran represents Rome, the See of Peter; St. Paul Outside the Walls, the See of Alexandria, allegedly the see presided over by Mark; St. Peter’s, the See of Constantinople; and St. Mary’s, the See of Antioch, where Mary St Mary Major Basilica

is supposed to have spent most of her life. One legend, unreported before the year 1000, gives another name to this feast: Our Lady of the Snows. According to that story, a wealthy Roman couple pledged their fortune to the Mother of God. In affirmation, she produced a miraculous summer snowfall and told them to build a church on the site. The legend was long celebrated by releasing a shower of white rose petals from the basilica’s dome every August 5. Theological debate over Christ’s nature as God and man reached fever pitch in Constantinople in the early fifth century. The chaplain of Bishop Nestorius began preaching against the title Theotokos, “Mother of God,” insisting that the Virgin was mother only of the human Jesus. Nestorius agreed, decreeing that Mary would henceforth be named “Mother of Christ” in his see. The people of Constantinople virtually revolted against their bishop’s refutation of a cherished belief. When the Council of Ephesus refuted Nestorius, believers took to the streets, enthusiastically (chanting, “Theotokos! Theotokos!” AmericanCatholic.org)

Then Jesus said to his disciples, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Matthew 16: 24-28)

The Cross There are various understandings and assessments of classic Buddhism. From the perspective of the Christian, there is no doubt that Siddha-rtha Gautama (the “Supreme Buddha”) grasped genuine features of the truth of things, which we have no time or space to go into just here. For instance, he strove to pursue a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification — and other things could be mentioned. The general popularity of the Dalai Lama in the West is one evidence of the positive and several truly valid features of Buddhism, especially its emphasis on ethics and understanding. On the seriously debit side, it would seem that classic Buddhism, in theory at least, does not allow for a loving Creator. Let us simply observe one obvious thing. As is well known, Gautama, after some 49 days of meditation under the Bodhi tree (at the age of 35) attained Enlightenment. Thenceforth he was known as the Awakened or Enlightened One — the “Buddha.” Importantly, he had gained a full insight into the cause of suffering and of the steps needed to eliminate it. These discoveries became known as the Four Noble Truths, and it is through the mastery of these truths that Nirvana, or a state of liberation, is possible. Let us leave Buddha at that point and simply observe that the avoidance of suffering and “evil” was the motive of Gautama’s search and his eventual message. Suffering was the black hole of human life, the source and locale of meaninglessness. It simply had to be avoided and eliminated, and Gautama is deemed by his vast numbers of disciples to have found the answer. What, though, is the “motive” of the intervention of the God of the Judeo-Christian revelation? It is not “suffering” as such, but something immeasurably worse: sin. Sin is the true ogre of life, and it is sin which is at the root of suffering and evil. It entered the world through the rebellion of the first man and woman — prompted by the Angel of rebellion — and the entire cosmos was dislocated as a result. Man fell in his nature and was rendered estranged from his loving Creator. The task ahead was redemption — not just from suffering but from the evil of sin.

I say this to introduce the surprising turn-about which Jesus Christ effected in regard to the intractable problem of suffering — and Gautama has been mentioned simply to illustrate how perennial and how much of a stumbling block human suffering is. Christ took the stage to do something absolutely original, though prefigured and hinted at in the prophecies before him. He arrived as the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. This was to be done precisely by his obedient suffering. His witness to the truth (about himself) would bring down upon his shoulders unheard of suffering, and this would be accepted by him in atonement for the sin of the world. This was the divine plan, and Jesus Christ did the great work. It was necessary, according to the divine plan, that he suffer and so enter his glory. His obedient suffering opened for us the gates of heaven. Now, apart from the dazzling benefit for mankind that this salvation from sin effected, it also transformed human suffering. It by no means took it away, but it transformed its meaning. Gautama and so many others since have, perhaps validly, seen suffering as the great stumbling block of human life. It has to be avoided, or eliminated, or eluded. It is essentially an ogre. What Jesus Christ did was to make of it a path to glory, provided, of course, it is obedient suffering. It must be suffering according to the divine will. If it is accepted, or even chosen, because it seems to be what our loving Creator (of whom Buddha was unaware or rejected) wills, then it is the seed-bed of most abundant life. The Christian who loves Jesus Christ and who follows him as the Object of revealed religion will not look on suffering and death as the dark end, but as the sure beginning and the path-way to abundant life. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and this has overflowing implications for suffering. So it is that our Lord says in today’s Gospel that “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew 16: 24-28). Because of Christ, God acts now through suffering.

This is not to say that the Christian breezily walks into suffering — absolutely not! His own nature which recoils from suffering is also the voice of God because God is the loving Creator of his human nature. But if the suffering ahead of him is allowed, disposed or willed by God because of circumstances or the call of duty — if it is a point of obedience that we suffer — then that suffering will be life-giving. If by grace and our own intent we suffer in union with the suffering Christ, that suffering will be the occasion and path to abundant life, which is what Jesus Christ came to give to us. Indeed, the highest step in the active and loving following of Christ is to choose with him the Cross which he places on our shoulders. Let us ask for the grace, then, to view the Cross of suffering as he viewed it — that the mind of Jesus Christ be in us!

-----------------------------------------------

Second reflection: (Matthew 16:24-28)

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself” Our Lord insists with his disciples that there is one lesson they must learn: if anyone wishes to follow him, “let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me”. There is no way of avoiding of difficulty and suffering in the doing of God’s will each day. Various saints and spiritual masters have also insisted that the best crosses to be taken up are the hidden and interior ones, those that are connected with cultivating the virtues of the heart. St Paul writes, “Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”, and Our Lord tells us that we are to learn of him, for he is “meek and humble of heart”. There we immediately have an immense and daily cross ahead of us. That cross is the daily denial of all within us that is pride and self-centred anger, and the constant cultivation of interior humility and meekness. There are numerous battles to be waged within, out of the sight of all except God who sees all.

God will be watching our efforts to be like Jesus in mind and heart. He will support by his grace all we do to carry the daily cross that is involved in doing this. Let us examine ourselves and resolve to do our work in life in a way that is informed by prayer and a Christ-like spirit of self-denial.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the Holy Sacrifice of the altar, the priest takes up the Body of our God, and the Chalice containing his Blood, and raises them above all the things of the earth, saying: Per Ipsurn, et cum Ipso, et in Ipso — through my Love, with my Love, in my Love! Unite yourself to the action of the priest. Or rather, make that act of the priest a part of your life.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Mt 17: 5 In a resplendent cloud the Holy Spirit appeared. The Father's voice was heard: This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.

Collect O God, who in the glorious Transfiguration of your Only Begotten Son confirmed the mysteries of faith by the witness of the Fathers and wonderfully prefigured our full adoption to sonship, grant, we pray, to your servants, that, listening to the voice of your beloved Son, we may merit to become co-heirs with him. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

All three Synoptic Gospels tell the story of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-9; Luke 9:28-36). With remarkable agreement, all three place the event shortly after Peter’s confession of faith that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus’ first prediction of his

passion and death. Peter’s eagerness to erect tents or booths on the spot suggests it occurred during the Jewish weeklong, fall Feast of Booths. In spite of the texts’ agreement, it is difficult to reconstruct the disciples’ experience, according to Scripture scholars, because the Gospels draw heavily on Old Testament descriptions of the Sinai encounter with God and prophetic visions of the Son of Man. Certainly Peter, James and John had a glimpse of Jesus’ divinity strong enough to strike fear into their hearts. Such an experience defies description, so they drew on familiar religious language to describe it. And certainly Jesus warned them that his glory and his suffering were to be inextricably connected — a theme John highlights throughout his Gospel. Tradition names Mt. Tabor as the site of the revelation. A church first raised there in the fourth century was dedicated on August 6. A feast in honour of the Transfiguration was celebrated in the Eastern Church from about that time. Western observance began in some localities about the eighth century. On July 22, 1456, Crusaders defeated the Turks at Belgrade. News of the victory reached Rome on August 6, and Pope Callistus III placed the feast on the Roman calendar the following year. “At his Transfiguration Christ showed his disciples the splendour of his beauty, to which he will shape and color those who are his: ‘He will reform our lowness configured to the body of his glory’” (Philippians 3:21) (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Daniel 7: 9-10.13-14; Psalm 96; 2 Peter 1: 16-19; Matthew 17: 1-9 (A)

After

six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters— one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah. While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him! When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. Get up, he said. Don't be afraid. When they looked up, they saw no-one except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, Don't tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. (Matthew 17: 1-9)

Transfiguration If one sets the Gospels next to other historical accounts of that era, an obvious characteristic of the Gospel accounts is its extensive featuring of miracles — that is, the miracles of Jesus Christ. Now, one of the many differences between the first three Gospels — so similar to one another as to be called the Synoptics — and the Gospel of St John, is their presentation of the miracles of Christ. In John’s Gospel, a mere handful of miracles are portrayed, but their significance is explored in depth. In chapter one there is no miracle, and in chapter two there is but one. In chapters seven and eight there are no miracles, while extensive passages are given of the words of Christ, and they constitute teaching of great depth about the Trinity and the Incarnation. The Synoptic Gospels narrate numerous miracles and often with little commentary. There are many exorcisms by Christ in the Synoptics, while exorcisms are lacking in St John. Some other things which the three Synoptics narrate remain unmentioned by St John. While the Synoptics give an account of the institution of the Eucharist, this is passed over by St John — whereas he chooses to give Christ’s teaching on the Eucharist (in Chapter 6) much more extensively than do the Synoptics, but in an entirely different setting. Especially intriguing is what we might call the tone of the Gospel narration of the miracles. There is little attempt to prove their historical reality — they are narrated in a simple and matter-of-fact fashion as if they were the last thing anyone could question. Their truth is assumed, taken for granted. In fact, I suspect that this lack of attempt in the Gospels to “prove” the historicity of the miracles is what feeds the contemporary Enlightenment prejudice against their objective truth. Observe the sobriety and brevity of the accounts of the miraculous Transfiguration in the Synoptics. That, I suggest, is itself convincing. It is presented as simple fact, but plainly it was extraordinary. When Moses came down from the Mountain his face was aglow because of his encounter with God. The glory of God had its physical impact on him, and he had to wear a veil when among the people. The Transfiguration of Christ was very different, and without parallel in the history of Israel.

The phenomena manifesting God’s glory on Mount Sinai was so great as to be witnessed by the people, and Moses’ very countenance glowed as a result. Of course, Moses' shining face was not a manifestation of his own glory, whereas the dazzling transfiguration of the whole of Jesus Christ’s figure did manifest his glory. While Yahweh God showed his glory on the Mountain of Sinai, on the Mountain of our Gospel scene (Matthew 17: 1-9) it is Jesus Christ who shows his glory, and others from heaven attest to it. First and foremost, the divine Voice from the bright cloud reveals to the three witnesses that the Man before them in whom they see so much glory is God the Son. While on Mount Sinai Yahweh God revealed his glory, on the Mountain of our Gospel scene the Son reveals his glory, and this is attested by the Father. It is also attested by the Old Testament tradition in the persons of Moses the giver and representative of the Law, and the prophet Elijah the representative of the prophetic tradition. Further, on the Mountain of Sinai the glory of Yahweh directed the people to his Commandments, written on the stone tablets, as their Law. Great was their God, and they saw his glory in the thunder and spectacle. Moses came down from the Mountain with his Law, and they were to obey it. On the Mountain of our Gospel scene, not only was the glory of Jesus Christ seen (as it had, to a point, in the signs that were his miracles). It was also revealed that all were to listen to him. This is my Son, listen to him! So here was the new Lawgiver on the Mountain, a new Moses and much more. He was God the Son, speaking on his own behalf and on behalf of Yahweh God his Father. A new Covenant was about to be established with a new Law and a new Sacrifice. The disciples were not to speak of the vision till the Son of Man had risen from the dead. Then the Sacrifice would be consummated and the new Law, that of the Holy Spirit, would be entrusted to the Church. There is a case for saying that the greatest miracle of our Lord’s public ministry was the Transfiguration, in which he was miraculously revealed in glory, reminiscent of the glory revealed on Sinai long before.

Let us place ourselves lovingly in the scene of the Transfiguration, while we remember the event of over a millennium before. Our scene today was witnessed by only three whereas Sinai was witnessed by a people. But millions know it now, and its significance surpasses that of Sinai. The Teacher of mankind was revealed in his glory, and the Father of all pointed to him as the One to whom all his children were to listen. His word is the new Law, together with the divine Spirit he won for us by his Sacrifice. Let us take our stand with him, for in him is found our salvation.

----------------------------------------------------

Second reflection: (Matthew 17:1-9)

“There in their presence he was transfigured: his face shone like the sun” One of the features of modern day life is the enormous industry generated by the thought of and preparation for the future. For instance, every employer has a considerable concern for the superannuation and retirement entitlements of the employees. People think of the future and prepare for it. But of course, we are referring here to future temporal interests: our future this side of the grave. The sad fact is that too few people prepare for what will happen just a little later than this, on the other side of the grave. Ordinary prudence would dictate that we ought live in such a way as to be prepared not only for a future temporal rest and security, but for rest and security in eternity. Today we think of how, not long before his Passion and Death, our Lord was given — and his disciples saw — a foretaste of his future glory. It surely consoled and strengthened our Lord, humanly speaking. So, too, the thought of our future glory should profoundly affect and orient our present temporal course. If we do this, it will be a source of true consolation.

Let us live daily in the light of our true homeland, making every day a worthy preparation for it. Let us live for God here, so as to possess him in heaven forever.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Gospel tells us that Jesus hid himself when they wanted to make him king after he had worked the miracle. Lord, you make us share in the miracle of the Eucharist. We beg you not to hide away. Live with us. May we see you, may we touch you, may we feel you. May we want to be beside you all the time, and have you as the King of our lives and of our work.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 74 (73): 20, 19, 22, 23 Look to your covenant, O Lord, and forget not the life of your poor ones for ever. Arise, O God, and defend your cause, and forget not the cries of those who seek you.

Collect Almighty ever-living God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised. 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.

(August 7) Saint Sixtus II, pope and martyr, and his martyr companions (martyred about 268 AD)

Pope Sixtus was persecuted by the Emperor Valerian. While he was celebrating the Eucharist he was taken prisoner and put to death together with four of his deacons. His name is included in the Roman canon. Saint Cajetan, priest (1480-1547) was remarkable for his spirit of prayer and charity. Cajetan's great zeal in seeking the salvation of souls earned for him the title of "hunter of souls". He is the founder of the Congregation of Clerks Regular, the Theatines.

Scripture today: 1 Kings 19:9.11-13; Psalm 84; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14: 22-33

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he Shroud of Turin

had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. It's a ghost, they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid. Lord, if it's you, Peter replied, tell me to come to you on the water. Come, he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came towards Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, Lord, save me! Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. You of little faith, he said, why did you doubt? And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshipped him, saying, Truly you are the Son of God. (Matthew 14: 22-33)

The faith of the Church In the midst of the storm, our Lord gives to Peter and to the Twelve a decisive reminder of the centrality of faith. “Man of little faith” he said, “why did you doubt?” Our Lord’s every action as narrated in the Gospels, and all his words recorded therein, throw great light on our salvation and sanctification. So let us place ourselves in the scene. The disciples are “far out on the lake,” and “battling with a heavy sea, for there was a headwind.” The situation portrayed is a portent of the life of a large proportion of the human race, a situation with which every person in difficulty can identify. Then “in the fourth watch of the night” Jesus “went towards them, walking on the lake”. Inasmuch as the scene is of the Twelve in their boat making their way across to the other side, let us imagine them as a symbol of the Church, transporting us across the sea of life to our homeland in heaven. The sea is life with all its difficulties and storms. Christ our Lord is with us in the middle of the sea and its rough weather. He is there, gazing at us, and we on him. What does he want from us? He does not intend that we be free of difficulties. He asks of us courage and faith in the midst of them. “Courage, it is I. Do not be afraid.” The source of our courage is himself and his all-powerful presence. To emphasize what is paramount, Jesus invites Peter to come to him across the water — in other words to exercise courage and faith. This, Peter hastens to do. But within moments, the wind being against him, Peter fails in his faith and begins to sink. Christ reaches out, saves him and says sadly, “Man of little faith, why did you doubt?” In page after page of the Gospels, our Lord asks for faith in himself and his word. Let us consider that faith. Faith in Jesus unites us not only to Jesus himself, but to all of those who are in the boat, and who are looking on him. That boat is the Church, and the Church is his creation. Our faith in Jesus — which is his gift to us — is our share in the Church’s faith. It unites us to Jesus, and to all who are in the boat with us gazing on the same Lord. It is because of our common faith that we are in the same boat. So it is that in union with him and them, our faith guides us across the sea of life to our homeland of heaven. It empowers us and the whole Church to believe in Christ’s love, power, and his divine revelation.

There is an important point here, and it is this. This faith which we have, as God’s precious gift, came to each of us through the ministry of the Church. We are not in the boat alone, gazing alone on Jesus in the midst of the storm. No, we are together in the boat, and that boat is Peter’s boat, which is the Church. We have the Twelve around us, and we are gazing on Jesus with them. Just as our natural life is a gift of God, but comes to us by means of our natural parents, so too the gift of faith comes to us as a gift of God, but comes to us by means of the ministry of the Church. The Church is our mother in the order of grace, and this motherhood of the Church is typified and embodied by Mary the mother of Jesus. She is the Church’s foremost member, Christ’s perfect disciple, and she was given to us by Christ in his dying moments on Calvary to be our mother. Behold your mother! he said to the beloved disciple. She typifies and embodies the Church our mother. A child entrusts himself to his parents who brought him into the world and who educate him for life. In like manner we, the members of the Church, look to the Church as our mother and put our faith in her word. This is why the Holy Catholic Church is included in the Creed: I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints. We received the gift of faith from God through her, through the Church our mother. We trust her completely as the spiritual mother given to us by God. In this respect, Cardinal Newman taught that the Catholic religion and the Protestant religion are significantly different. While both believe in Jesus the Son of God, the Catholic looks to the Church as the voice of Christ for each generation, never presuming to subject the Church’s teaching to his own judgment as to whether or not that teaching is true. The Catholic, as a Catholic, has accepted that Christ founded the Church to represent him. Hence he begins with faith in the word of the Church as being the word of Christ. He accepts its truth, since it comes from Christ the Church’s head. The Protestant, precisely as Protestant, grounds his acceptance of doctrine on his own judgment, and makes his own decision as to what is Christ’s truth and what is not. For him the Church’s word and doctrine is not the deciding authority, but is but one more authority which he must test in the court of his own judgment.

The Catholic acknowledges the Church as Christ’s Church, and on that first principle he recognizes her teaching as Christ’s teaching. He recognizes the Church as our spiritual mother, and accepts her faith as his faith. Therefore what the Church lays down, what the Church binds and loosens, he, the Catholic, accepts and believes. In the midst of the storm, Christ says, “Man of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14: 22-33) As we hear Christ’s words, let us resolve to make the Church’s faith always our own faith, never departing from it, and resolving always to recognize in her word the word of the living Jesus, living head of the Church age after age.

Further Reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church no.168-169 (“Look on the faith of your church.”)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Talk to the Three Persons, to God the Father, to God the Son, to God the Holy Spirit. And so as to reach the Blessed Trinity, go through Mary.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Mt 25:34, 36, 40 Come, you blessed of my Father, says the Lord: I was sick, and you visited me. Amen, I say to you: whatever you did for one of the least of my brethren, you did it for me.

Collect O God, source of all goodness, who have shown us in Saint Mary a woman of faith living by the power of the Cross, teach us, we pray, by her example to live the gospel in changing times and to respect and defend the human dignity of all in our land. Through our Lord.

On January 15, 1842 Mary MacKillop was born of Scottish parents, Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald in Fitzroy, Victoria. This was less than seven years after Faulkner sailed up the Yarra, when Elizabeth Street was a deep gully and Lonsdale Street was still virgin bush. A plaque in the footpath now marks the place of her birth in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. Mary, the eldest of eight St Mary MacKillop

children, was well educated by her father who spent some years studying for the priesthood in Rome but through ill health had returned to his native Scotland until 1835 when he migrated to Australia with his parents. Unfortunately, he lacked financial awareness, so the family was often without a home of their own, depending on friends and relatives and frequently separated from one another. From the age of sixteen, Mary earned her living and greatly supported her family, as a governess, as a clerk for Sands and Kenny (now Sands and MacDougall), and as a teacher at the Portland school. While acting as a governess to her uncle's children at Penola, Mary met Father Julian Tenison Woods who, with a parish of 22,000 square miles/56,000 square kilometres, needed help in the religious education of children in the outback. At the time Mary's family depended on her income so she was not free to follow her dream. However, in 1866, greatly inspired and encouraged by Father Woods, Mary opened the first Saint Joseph's School in a disused stable in Penola. Young women came to join Mary, and so the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph was begun. In 1867, Mary was asked by Bishop Shiel to come to Adelaide to start a school. From there, the Sisters spread, in groups to small outback settlements and large cities around Australia, New Zealand, and now in Peru, Brazil and refugee camps of Uganda and Thailand. Mary and these early Sisters, together with other Religious Orders and Lay Teachers of the time, had a profound influence on the forming of Catholic Education as we have come to know and experience it today. She also opened Orphanages, Providences to care for the homeless and destitute both young and old, and Refuges for ex-prisoners and ex-prostitutes who wished to make a fresh start in life. Throughout her life, Mary met with opposition from people outside the Church and even from some of those within it. In the most difficult of times she consistently refused to attack those who wrongly accused her and undermined her work, but continued in the way she believed God was calling her and was always ready to forgive those who wronged her. Throughout her life Mary suffered ill health. She died on August 8, 1909 in the convent in Mount Street, North Sydney where her tomb is now enshrined. This great Australian woman inspired great dedication to God's work in the then new colonies. In today's world, she stands as an example of great courage and trust in her living out of God's loving and compassionate care of those in need.

Scripture today: 1 Kings 17:8-16; Psalm 63:1-8; Colossians 3:12-17; Matthew 6:25-34

I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is Shroud of Turin

more than food, and the body more than clothing! Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are? Can any of you, however much you worry, add one single cubit to your span of life? And why worry about clothing? Think of the flowers growing in the fields; they never have to work or spin: yet I assure you that not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of these. Now if that is how God clothes the wild flowers growing in the field which are there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will he not much more look after you, you have so little faith? So do not worry; do not say, "What are we to eat? What are we to drink? What are we to wear?." It is the gentiles who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God's saving justice, and all these other things will be given you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6: 25-34)

Trust in God Mary MacKillop (1842-1909) commands fascination well beyond the shores of Australia. I remember attending a retreat given in Australia in about the year 1990 by Father Robert Faricy SJ, an American professor of Spirituality at the Gregorian University in Rome. Widely published, he lectured and gave retreats in various countries over the course of his career. He told those attending how impressed he had alway been by the Australian nun, Mary MacKillop — and this was some five years before her beatification by Pope John Paul II. It is not difficult to put one’s finger on the reasons for her appeal. She was a woman of great humanity and human attraction. But of course, her singular achievement was personal sanctity. This she attained by the power of grace and her own co-operation with that grace. In one brief biography of her there is the testimony of an elderly priest who had known her when he was young . He said that she seemed always to be living in God. When the Sisters (Daughters) of our Lady of the Sacred Heart (founded by the French priest Father Jules Chevalier in 1874) arrived in Australia in 1885, they soon heard of Mother Mary MacKillop, the co-foundress of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. What they heard was that she was a living saint — and Mary was but in her mid-forties then. Plainly, she was a remarkable personality in the realm of personal religion. Now, at the beginning of her consecrated religious life during her 26th year, she took the name of Mary of the Cross. She had, well before this, perceived that the acceptance of suffering as the will of God, and joining it with the Cross of Jesus Christ, was absolutely essential to the Christian way. This was a great insight, a leap in Christian understanding, which had come to her early. The gift of the Holy Spirit at her Baptism had produced in her this fruit of understanding. Some people never understand this properly, and it is a gift of grace which has, though, to be accepted and embraced. St Paul writes of our sharing in the sufferings of Christ (2 Corinthians 1:5), as does St Peter (1 Peter 4:13). Both these reflect our Lord’s solemn directive, that if anyone wishes to be his disciple, he must deny himself and take up his Cross every day, and follow in our Lord’s footsteps (Matthew 16:24).

That was Mary MacKillop’s insight and resolve. She was granted something of a premonition that her calling was to share in the Cross of Jesus Christ. The train of sufferings that ensued — injustices (such as her extraordinary excommunication), misunderstandings, slanders, at times at the hands of good and well-meaning persons — is a long one. She also had a fair share of physical pain and reversals. What is notable was her response: she was uncomplaining, even-tempered, magnanimous and approachable. On her tomb at North Sydney is emblazoned the simple statement: Trust in God. It is this which enables the Christian to pass through the fire of suffering, being progressively denied what human nature holds dear. In our Gospel today (Matthew 6: 25-34), our Lord points to the way a person is delivered from the natural attachment to the things of this life and helped to forge a powerful, indomitable attachment to the will of God. “Think of the flowers growing in the fields; they never have to work or spin: yet I assure you that not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of these. Now if that is how God clothes the wild flowers growing in the field which are there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will he not much more look after you, you who have so little faith? So do not worry”. God will look after us. Come rack, come rope, come whatever it might be in life, all is in the hands of God our loving Father. Set your heart on God’s will, trust, and all will be well: “ Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God's saving justice, and all these other things will be given you as well.” Towards the end of Mary MacKillop’s life, her brother Donald — a Jesuit priest — commented on her life: it was a life planted and steeped in the Cross. But it was the embrace of this in a wondrously prudent manner which sanctified this great-souled woman. And so it has been with the saints. Away in England and scarcely known to her, was a more famous man, much older than she. I refer to John Henry Newman — his path was notably one of the Cross. It led him to sanctity, recognized by Pope Benedict XVI when in September 2010 he beatified the great thinker and divine. It is the Cross that we ought especially notice in the story of sanctity.

Let us take to heart our Lord’s powerful though simple words in today’s Gospel. St Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises lays down the foundation of Christian sanctity in his first Meditation, the “Principle and Foundation.” Man is made to love and serve God his Creator. So he must become detached from all created things and turn them to account for the attainment of his goal in life, which is the fullest love for God possible to him. That detachment comes by what, in God’s sight, is a gift: a real share in the Cross of Jesus Christ. Let us pray for that gift, and for the readiness to accept it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You don’t have living faith if you aren’t giving yourself to Jesus here and now.

A brilliant philosopher who stopped believing in God when she was 14, Edith Stein was so captivated

by reading the autobiography of Teresa of Avila that she began a spiritual journey that led to her Baptism in 1922. Twelve years later she imitated Teresa by becoming a Carmelite, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Born into a prominent Jewish family in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), Edith abandoned Judaism in her teens. As a student at the University of Göttingen, she became fascinated by phenomenology, an approach to philosophy. Excelling as a protégé of Edmund Husserl, one of the leading phenomenologists, Edith earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1916. She continued as a university teacher until 1922 when she moved to a Dominican school in Speyer; her appointment as lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich ended under pressure from the Nazis. After living in the Cologne Carmel (1934-38), she moved to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands. The Nazis occupied that country in 1940. Edith Stein

In retaliation for being denounced by the Dutch bishops, the Nazis arrested all Dutch Jews who had become Christians. Teresa Benedicta and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942. Pope John Paul II (himself with a background in phenomenology) beatified Teresa Benedicta in 1987 and canonized her in 1998. The writings of Edith Stein fill 17 volumes, many of which have been translated into English. A woman of integrity, she followed the truth wherever it led her. After becoming a Catholic, Edith continued to honour her mother’s Jewish faith. Sister Josephine Koeppel, O.C.D. , translator of several of Edith’s books, sums up this saint with the phrase, “Learn to live at God’s hands.” In his homily at the canonization Mass, Pope John Paul II said: “Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholics and Jews from the Netherlands to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with deep respect. A few days before her deportation, the woman religious had dismissed the question about a possible rescue: ‘Do not do it! Why should I be spared? Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed.’” Addressing himself to the young people gathered for the canonization, the pope said: “Your life is not an endless series of open doors! Listen to your heart! Do not stay on the surface but go to the heart of things! And when the time is right, have the courage to decide! The Lord is waiting for you to put your freedom in his good hands.”

Scripture today: Deuteronomy 31: 1-8; Psalm: Deuteronomy 32; Matthew 18:1-5.10.12-14

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? He c Shroud of Turin

alled 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. What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost. (Matthew 18:1-5.10.12-14)

Great in the kingdom One of the intriguing features of ordinary Christian discourse is that the word “kingdom” has long since passed out of common usage. That is to say, we do not ordinarily refer to the “kingdom” of heaven. Of course, we are referring here simply to expressions, and not to the reality conveyed by the expressions. It is not hard to understand why we do not ordinarily use this turn of phrase, so common in the Gospels and so frequently used by Jesus Christ himself. The Christian knows that the “kingdom of heaven” — or the “kingdom of God” — here on earth is essentially the Person of Jesus Christ and union with him. Specifically, the Catholic Christian knows that Christ, and therefore the “kingdom of heaven,” is accessed in Christ’s Church, and that the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” have been placed by Christ in the hands of Simon Peter, the Church’s visible Rock. So, references to the person of Christ or to Christ’s Church are assumed to be entirely sufficient. Nevertheless, the reader of the Gospels does notice on the one hand how frequent and prominent is the expression “kingdom of heaven” or “kingdom of God,” and on the other how infrequently we use it in ordinary Christian discourse. I say this merely to emphasize the reality of the “kingdom of heaven” in the preaching and instructions of our Lord himself, and in particular in our Gospel passage today. We should advert to it, or we may miss it. So real was the idea of “the kingdom” in our Lord’s proclamation, that his disciples took the “kingdom” to be very much like a temporal kingdom — which, of course, fitted in with the popular expectation anyway. St Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, makes it clear that even after the Resurrection and prior to Pentecost, the disciples were expecting a temporal kingdom from Jesus. “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). All up, it is plain that our Lord had been preaching very much on the establishment on earth of a “kingdom” — the “kingdom of God” or the “kingdom of heaven.”

So it is that the disciples well understood that God’s “kingdom” was coming, and that Jesus was to be the King. In our Gospel scene they come to our Lord with their question, and behind the question is their impression that the “kingdom of heaven” will contain all the apparatus of any kingdom. This will include the important people, the little people, and of course the “greatest” in the “kingdom.” Their question, then, is, who will be the “greatest” in the kingdom of heaven? This was important to them, for we read a little later in the same Gospel that “the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favour of him.” The favour? “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” Then we read that “when the other ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers” (Matthew 20:20-24). They thought the two brothers were seizing the first places. Now, it was clear that Christ was allocating certain roles and missions within the “kingdom” to various disciples. From the disciples he had chosen Twelve to be with him and to be sent out in a special way to represent him, exercising certain of his powers in proclaiming the “kingdom.” These Twelve were altogether special, and it must have been plain that in the “kingdom” they were to exercise a fundamental role. Other disciples were called to various forms of service — we read of seventy-two being sent out in pairs. A structure was emerging. A little before our Gospel passage today, our Lord made it clear to his disciples that he would build a “Church” and that Simon Peter was to be its “Rock.” To him he would give the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16: 18-19). The “kingdom” would be present in his “Church,” and within the “kingdom” there would be various roles. But our Lord did not say about those exercising these roles that this or that one among them would be more or less “important” or “great.” He did not declare who would be the “greatest.” In appointing Simon to be the visible Rock of the Church, and the bearer of the keys, our Lord did not tell him that he would be the “greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Would there be “the greatest” in this kingdom? Was it legitimate to aspire to be the “greatest”? Yes it was, if properly understood.

In our Gospel today our Lord makes it clear who is the “greatest” in the kingdom of heaven. “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 18:1-5.10.12-14). The greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the humblest. To become “great” in God’s sight, one must be great in humility, and prefer the lowlier place. Our exemplar is Jesus Christ himself who, as St Paul writes, possessed the glory of God but set that aside and became as a slave, as men are, and lowlier still, even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:6). Let us pray for understanding, so as to pursue the path of true greatness, that of Jesus Christ.

“Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom” Time and again one comes across people — elderly people included — who are not aware of having committed any sins for a long time. After all, they say, all they do is live a quiet life. Clearly they think that the only real sin is the sin that can be observed, the sin of word or of deed. They also forget sins of omission. Cardinal Newman once pointed out that one could sit back, fold one’s arms, shut one’s eyes, and commit a mortal sin that could take one to Hell forever. He was referring to sins of thought involving the will. St Paul writes in one of his Letters “let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”. We must sanctify our minds. Let us begin by adverting to what is going on in our mind and heart most of the day, every day. No one sees this except God — but think of the lack of charity and numerous other sins that occur in the sanctuary of one’s heart, under the constant gaze of God.

Our Lord in today’s gospel asks us to “become like little children.” That is, we are to become humble and docile — and this applies not only to our words and deeds, but to the whole life of the mind. Sanctity will be gained or lost depending on the extent to which we sanctify our minds and hearts, and not only our audible words and manifest deeds. Let us aim, then, to put on the mind and heart of Christ and to act in mind and heart like “little children.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All Christians should seek Christ and get to know him, so as to love him better and better. It’s like courting. A couple need to get to know each other well, for if they don’t, they will not really love each other. And our life is a life of Love.

Entrance Antiphon This is the blessed Lawrence, who gave himself up for the treasure of the Church: for this he earned the suffering of martyrdom to ascend with joy to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Collect O God, giver of that ardour of love for you by which Saint Lawrence was outstandingly faithful in service and glorious in martyrdom, grant that we may love what he loved and put into practice what he taught. 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.

(August 10) St Lawrence, deacon and martyr

Saint Lawrence was one of seven deacons who were in charge of giving help to the poor and the needy. When a persecution broke out, Pope St. Sixtus was condemned to death. As he was led to execution, Lawrence followed him weeping, "Father, where are you going without your deacon?" he said. "I am not leaving you, my son," answered the Pope. "in three days you will follow me." Full of joy, Lawrence gave to the poor the rest of the money he had on hand and even sold expensive vessels to have more to give away. The Prefect of Rome, a greedy pagan, thought the Church had a great fortune hidden away. So he ordered Lawrence to bring the Church's treasure to him. The Saint said he would, in three days. Then he went through the city and gathered together all the poor and sick people supported by the Church. When he showed them to the Prefect, he said: "This is the Church's treasure!" In great anger, the Prefect condemned Lawrence to a slow, cruel death. The Saint was tied on top of an iron grill over a slow fire that roasted his flesh little by little, but Lawrence was burning with so much love of God that he almost did not feel the flames. In fact, God gave him so much strength and joy that he even joked. "Turn me over," he said to the judge. "I'm done on this side!" And just before he died, he said, "It's cooked enough now." Then he prayed that the city of Rome might be converted to Jesus and that the Catholic Faith might spread all over the world. After that, he went to receive the martyr's reward. Saint Lawrence's feast day is August 10th.

Scripture today: 2 Corinthians 9:6-10; Psalm 112:1-2, 5-6, 7-8, 9; John 12:24-26

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honour whoever serves me.” (John 12:24-26)

Love Nature films have always had a wide popularity. The breathtaking beauty of nature is a source of unending filming and included in this are documentaries of the animal kingdom. There are two aspects of the life of animals which never cease to mesmerize the viewing public. Firstly, there is the preying of one animal on another or of one herd on another, in order to gain sustenance. I remember watching a film of a couple of lions struggling with a crocodile over a young, living buffalo. The crocodile was attempting to pull the buffalo to itself into the river, while the lions were trying to pull it to themselves on to the shore. Each saw the young buffalo as prey. The lions won the tussle, but the buffalo was rescued by the intervention of the buffalo herd from which it had been taken by the attack of the lions. All across the world, from one species and genus of living thing to another, we notice that one living thing serves as prey and sustenance for another. What is the meaning of this? I prefer to look on it as a dim reflection of a pattern which is seen in the highest rank of living things in the universe, which is man. Man spends himself, gives himself, surrenders himself, even dies, for another. We call this love. The function of serving as prey in the animal kingdom in which one thing is given up for the sake of another is a dim reflection of the higher law of self-sacrificial love. But there is another feature of the animal kingdom, apart from this law of being prey, which also fascinates the observer. It is the remarkable care exercised by the animal parent for its offspring. While this, too, is the fruit of mere instinct, it is most impressive to see the extraordinary lengths to which the animal parent cares for its young. What is the meaning of this? It is even more obviously a reflection of the higher law that is manifest in the crown of visible things, which is man. Man can and does love. His love for the other leads him to care for, to spend himself for, and even to sacrifice himself completely for, the other, especially those who depend on him. He can lay down his life for the other. Further, man sees that his truest fulfilment lies in this direction of self-sacrificing love.

The law of love, I suggest, is the deepest law of the universe, and it is reflected in various degrees of clarity among the orders of being making up our world. The grandest thing in the world is human love at its self-sacrificing best — and this, of course, reveals the law of the universe more clearly than any other phenomenon. I would make this further observation. This key to the universe that is love is not normally known by unaided human reflection. I suspect that by merely gazing at the world we would find ourselves fastening on what is not loving, what is evil, all that leads to mere suffering. We would be struck by the problem of evil. We would miss the beautiful thing that is really central in creation, which is the law or pattern of love. What provides us with the key to everything is God’s revelation of himself above all in the person of Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son we have come to learn that God is love, and all he does is done for love. Creation is the work of a God of love, of One who lovingly spends himself to restore his creation to its intended life of love. Thus we see everywhere in creation the imprint of love, the yearning for love, the striving to be loving, and the fulfilment that is attained in love. Jesus Christ is not only the revelation of God to man, the revelation of a God of love. He is also the revelation to man of man himself, what it is to be truly human. Jesus Christ is the pinnacle which reveals the calling of all creation, most especially man who is its crown, to self-sacrificing love. He reveals it, and he enables it — by drawing all to himself. It is by means of union with him that we are enabled by the gift of his grace to be self-sacrificing in love. By means of union with Jesus Christ in love, man is able to give himself most fully in love. Christ is the model of what it is to be human at its very best. All of this brings us to our Gospel today, selected by the Church for the Feast of St Lawrence the martyr and deacon. St Lawrence, living by the grace of Christ, gave himself totally for Christ and his Church. He is a model of self-sacrificing love because he was truly united to Jesus Christ. The greatest manifestation of the love of God, and of the love imprinted on creation, is Christ and his truest disciples — those, in other words, who live by his life.

Let us learn very quickly that the true path to human fulfilment is that of union with Jesus Christ. This path is the path of self-sacrificing love, and to death if necessary. Christ is the pre-eminent martyr, the witness to the truth of God and of what God is like. We are all called to be “martyrs” in union with him — witnesses by our lives to the truth of God who is self-sacrificing love. St Lawrence the deacon and martyr is an instance of this. As our Lord says, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.” (John 12:24-26)

“Anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life” Today we think of St Lawrence who gave his life for Christ in a horrific death by roasting on a gridiron. In thinking of such heroism, we think, firstly, of his love for the Church, the bride of Christ. He was ordered to give up the Church’s property to the state, and to abjure his allegiance to Christ and the Church. He refused, of course. His sufferings proved his love for the Church. This demonstrated the typical Christian reverence and love for the Church. This in turn bears witness to Christ’s own love for the Church. Suffering and the cross tested and manifested his love. And then, Lawrence’s martyrdom manifested the fortitude of the Christian life. What strength Lawrence displayed, what strength of spirit! This fortitude was not simply the fortitude of a strong and heroic nature. It was a share in the fortitude of Christ himself, a heavenly gift and endowment of the Holy Spirit. It was the same Spirit, at work in Christ as he offered himself up on the Cross, who was at work in St Lawrence. He, the divine Spirit, gave to Lawrence the strength to bear witness in his suffering.

The word “martyr” is a Greek word — it means a witness. Let us pray fervently to be united to Christ in good times and in bad, so that in our sufferings we too may bear witness to the living Jesus, right to the end.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pause to consider the holy wrath of the Master, when he sees his Father’s honour abused in the temple at Jerusalem. What a lesson for you! You should never be indifferent, or play the coward, when the things of God are treated without respect.

One of the more sugary movies made about Francis of Assisi pictures Clare as a golden-haired beauty floating through sun-drenched fields, a sort of one-woman counterpart to the new Franciscan Order. The beginning of her religious life was indeed movie material. St Clare of Assisi

Having refused to marry at 15, she was moved by the dynamic preaching of Francis. He became her lifelong friend and spiritual guide. At 18, she escaped one night from her father’s home, was met on the road by friars carrying torches, and in the poor little chapel called the Portiuncula received a rough woollen habit, exchanged her jewelled belt for a common rope with knots in it, and sacrificed the long tresses to Francis’ scissors. He placed her in a Benedictine convent which her father and uncles immediately stormed in rage. She clung to the altar of the church, threw aside her veil to show her cropped hair and remained adamant. End of movie material. Sixteen days later her sister Agnes joined her. Others came. They lived a simple life of great poverty, austerity and complete seclusion from the world, according to a Rule which Francis gave them as a Second Order (Poor Clares). Francis obliged her under obedience at age 21 to accept the office of abbess, one she exercised until her death. The nuns went barefoot, slept on the ground, ate no meat and observed almost complete silence. (Later Clare, like Francis, persuaded her sisters to moderate this rigor: “Our bodies are not made of brass.”) The greatest emphasis, of course, was on gospel poverty. They possessed no property, even in common, subsisting on daily contributions. When even the pope tried to persuade her to mitigate this practice, she showed her characteristic firmness: “I need to be absolved from my sins, but I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ.” Contemporary accounts glow with admiration of her life in the convent of San Damiano in Assisi. She served the sick, waited on table, washed the feet of the begging nuns. She came from prayer, it was said, with her face so shining it dazzled those about her. She suffered serious illness for the last 27 years of her life. Her influence was such that popes, cardinals and bishops often came to consult her—she never left the walls of San Damiano.

Francis always remained her great friend and inspiration. She was always obedient to his will and to the great ideal of gospel life which he was making real. A well-known story concerns her prayer and trust. She had the Blessed Sacrament placed on the walls of the convent when it faced attack by invading Saracens. “Does it please you, O God, to deliver into the hands of these beasts the defenceless children I have nourished with your love? I beseech you, dear Lord, protect these whom I am now unable to protect.” To her sisters she said, “Don’t be afraid. Trust in Jesus.” The Saracens fled. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to Shroud of Turin

settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow- servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded. His fellow- servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow- servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart. When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. (Matthew 18:21–19:1)

Forgive! Among what we might call the classical sages, Jesus Christ lays down one of the toughest of requirements: we are always to forgive, no matter what the offence. It must be forgiveness not only in word and deed, but from the heart. Let us set this demanding requirement in some sort of context. The word “forgive” may be understood as deriving from the word “give” — as in “give up.” Give up what? Bishop Joseph Butler’s much-discussed 18th century sermon on resentment and forgiveness (in his Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel) places special emphasis on giving up resentment. That provides one marker. One can go beyond this to “giving up” the demand for compensation. In any case, by a free act of “giving up” the victim alters the wrongdoer’s status in relation to himself, and the two are reconciled. The one who forgives benefits morally by his act, and the one being forgiven will probably benefit morally too because his past act is thus released from a form of permanence. The various notions of forgiveness and their moral value have long been philosophically contested. Aristotle writes that the person deficient in appropriate anger is “unlikely to defend himself” and “endure being insulted” and for this reason can be a “fool” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1126a5). In general, it would appear that both Plato and Aristotle suggest that anger controlled by or expressive of reason manifests virtue, whereas anger ungoverned by rationality is a vice. So for Aristotle, a rational “anger” is virtuous. Plutarch states that “we grow angry with enemies and friends, with children and parents, yes, even with the gods, with wild beasts and soulless implements” (Moralia, Volume 6). So it is natural to be angry. It is also natural to expect that one be requited, and till this is forthcoming, it may not be clear that one ought overcome one’s anger except for the sake of personal wellbeing. All up, I think we could say that the moral dictum of Jesus Christ on forgiveness far surpasses what ordinary human reason commonly requires of the man who wishes to be moral. What, then, is our Lord saying about the act of forgiveness from the heart of genuine injury?

Our Lord begins, not with what seems to be “rational” — such as, that it is best for one’s own happiness to forgive from the heart, or that, in view of the unknown mitigating circumstances it is prudent to forgive, or that one becomes more magnanimous (and so a better man) in forgiving — but with what God does. God is a God of love, and this love is manifested in mercy and forgiveness. Indeed, St Thomas Aquinas writes that the almighty power of God is shown in his mercy. A special manifestation of his mercy is forgiveness. Our Lord’s great mission was to reveal his heavenly Father in his own person and teaching. His preferred mode of teaching was the parable and in his parable today he gives a striking image of the divine way of acting. “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt” (Matthew 18:21–19:1). That was normal practice, and quite “rational.” The king would at least reclaim something of what he was owed, and what he was owed was impossibly great. Although the value of the “Talent” varied depending upon the area in which it was used, 10,000 talents was a truly enormous sum. It was equivalent to millions upon millions of dollars. The “servant” must be regarded as a tributary prince, but the debt was impossible. That is man’s situation before God. He is totally indebted to him, and the debt is beyond payment. Were God to require payment, man would be ruined beyond imagining. But, man having presented himself in all his poverty to his divine Lord and asking mercy, this mercy is immediately accorded in the form of forgiveness of the debt. That is where our Lord begins. He starts from the nature of the ineffable God, which he reveals. On the basis of this revelation Christ commands that we be like our heavenly Father. God’s nature, thus revealed by his divine Son who himself acts in this very manner, is the norm for moral living. The Christian who knows and loves Jesus Christ, and who receives his grace, willingly strives to forgive.

Let us keep our eyes on Jesus Christ as the exemplar of what it means to be truly human. Christ, and not Plato, Aristotle, or any of the world’s greatest minds or religious leaders, is man’s norm, man’s teacher, inspirer, and source of life. On the Mountain, with Christ before his disciples in a dazzling glory, the voice came from the shining cloud, announcing, “This is my Son. Listen to him!” However we understand the mechanics of forgiveness, the one thing we just must do, is forgive. This is not just to be forgiveness in word and deed, but from the heart. Too difficult? For man, indeed it is so. But all things are possible for God! So let us insistently ask for his grace.
(E.J.Tyler)

“..will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart” If there is one thing that drives a great deal of the life of societies and individuals, it is the sense of hurt and injury, and the anger resulting therefrom. Consider the worldwide terrorism and strife within and among nations. Consider the protracted inner hurt and anger going on in the minds and hearts of so many individuals, due to past and present experiences. What is the answer to this? A most important part of the answer is the need to find a way to forgive. So many people seem unable to forgive. In today’s Gospel our Lord tells the story of the forgiven steward who himself refused to forgive. He was forgiven an impossible debt by his king. Immediately he went out and inflicted suffering on his fellow servant who had not paid his debt to him, a debt that was paltry by comparison with what he had owed to his king. He forgot how greatly he had been forgiven.

We shall go a long way towards being able to forgive our brother if we keep ever before our minds how sinful we are and have been, how indebted to God we are in consequence, and how much God has done to forgive our debt. Let us then grow in our sense of sin and in the mercy of God in our regard. Filled more and more with the sense of this, we shall be more and more disposed to be merciful to others in respect to their transgressions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fall in love with the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ. Aren’t you glad that he should have wanted to be like us? Thank Jesus for this wonderful expression of his goodness.

When he died at the age of 23, Louis was already a Franciscan, a bishop and a saint! Louis’s parents were Charles II of Naples and Sicily and Mary, daughter of the King of Hungary. Louis was related to St. Louis IX on his father’s side and to Elizabeth of Hungary on his mother’s side. Louis showed early signs of attachment to prayer and to the corporal works of mercy. As a child he used to take food from the castle to feed the poor. When he was 14, Louis and two of his brothers were taken as hostages to the king of Aragon’s court as part of a political deal involving Louis’s father. At the court Louis was tutored by Franciscan friars under whom he made great progress both in his studies and in the spiritual life. Like St. Francis he developed a special love for those afflicted with leprosy. While he was still a hostage, Louis decided to renounce his royal title and become a priest. When he was 20, he was allowed to leave the king of Aragon’s court. He renounced his title in favour of his brother Robert and was ordained the next year. Very shortly after, he was appointed bishop of Toulouse, but the pope agreed to Louis’s request to become a Franciscan first. The Franciscan spirit pervaded Louis. "Jesus Christ is all my riches; he alone is sufficient for me," Louis kept repeating. Even as a bishop he wore the Franciscan habit and sometimes begged. He assigned a friar to offer him correction — in public if necessary — and the friar did his job. Louis’s service to the Diocese of Toulouse was richly blessed. In no time he was considered a saint. Louis set aside 75 percent of his income as bishop to feed the poor and maintain churches. Each day he fed 25 poor people at his table. Louis was canonized in 1317 by Pope John XXII, one of his former teachers. "All the faithful were edified by the fervour of his devout celebration of Mass, the efficacy of his deep humility, his tender compassion, his upright life, the harmonious congruity in all his actions, words and bearing. Who without wonderment could look upon a most charming young man, the son of so mighty a king, outstanding for his generosity, raised to such dignity, renowned for his influence, pre-eminent for humility, living a life of such mortification, endowed with such wisdom, clothed in so poor a habit yet renowned for the charm of his discourse and a shining example of upright life?" (from a contemporary biography). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?" He said in reply, "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate." They said to him, "Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss her?" He said to them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery." (Matthew 19:3-12)

Marriage It is natural for the human being to take pride in what he “does,” in his “work.” A man may build his own house, or create and develop his own garden, or build up his professional work, raise his family, or do some other “work” in life that gives him a certain pride and joy. What he “does,” and the “work” he develops is an important expression of himself. We must understand this broadly, for a sick and bedridden person can have a “work” to do in life, and it might be to suffer well. St Bernadette Soubirous said as she began her last illness that it was her last “job.” One might say that a person’s work — what he actually does — expresses and conveys his most important thoughts and values. It is his “word” to the world. Pope John Paul II entitled his most important philosophical book, The Acting Person, which placed the emphasis on a person’s action rather than simply on his thought. As man has his work, so God works. The work of God that is most immediately evident to us is creation. We see this work all around us, and the Book of Genesis opens with God doing this very work, the work of creating the world. As something he “does,” creation is something he “says.” Created nature, the world that is before us, is the word of the Creator to those who can hear or read it. There is a strong line of thought in English theism and apologetics that begins with the dictum that nature is the voice of God. The nature — the created world — into which we are born, and of which we are a part, and which continually surrounds us, speaks of its Author who has expressed himself in it. It is his word, his voice, his created statement. Cardinal Newman famously took the point a step further and pointed to the natural conscience as the voice of its divine Author, revealing not only his will but something of his nature. But now, there are other things in the world which, in the divine plan, are especially the work of God and therefore are his voice. They express his own divine nature (to a point) and therefore his will. Our Gospel passage today points to one great thing in the world which has come from the hand of God: marriage between man and woman. Marriage is God’s creation.

I am not sure that man would be able to see with his own unaided reason that a true marriage is indissoluble and monogamous. The voice of mankind on the point is so mixed and confused. Fallen human nature seems, on the face of it, to have failed to attain clarity on this point. But such is the case in many other matters too — such as the primary truth of one, infinite God. Though the human reason is capable of attaining this truth, the fact is that the testimony of mankind is profoundly discordant in the matter of the deity. So it is in the question of marriage. But we have the immense benefit of a divine revelation not only in respect to the nature of the deity itself, but in respect to many other matters, marriage included. At the outset of the inspired Scriptures — which is to say, in the first two chapters of the first book of the Bible — man is taught that there is but one almighty God who is the creator of all, and that he created marriage too. Further, we have the inestimable benefit of the teaching of Jesus Christ on this matter of the teaching of the first two chapters of Genesis on marriage. Christ has authoritatively interpreted the meaning of Genesis 1 and 2 on marriage. “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Matthew 19: 3-12). If the world and nature, being the work of God’s hands, constitute his word and express something of his nature, this is so for marriage too. Genesis states that the image of God is given in the complementarity of man and woman: “In the divine image he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Marriage, which is the work of God, reflects the life of God. It reveals both his love for man who is the work of his hands, and it reveals the communion within himself that is his own life. The communion of love between the divine Persons of the godhead is eternally indissoluble, and he joins man and wife in marriage to reflect this. Thus is the bond of marriage by nature indissoluble. What God has joined, man must not divide.

Much light on the meaning of things comes from reason, but our best light comes from divine revelation. That revelation is present in its fulness in the person and word of Jesus Christ. He has thrown light on the work of God that is marriage. Marriage is God’s creation. He himself joins husband and wife in marriage, and being his work, their marriage is his word. It reflects not only his will for them, but something of himself and his nature. Marriage is a natural revelation, and it reveals both the love of God for man, and the loving communion that constitutes his own life. Let every married couple, then, make it their mission in life to live as a reflection of the divine.

“I gave you a land where you never toiled, you live in towns you never built” There is an old saying that is quoted in a variety of contexts. It is that the glass when held up can be viewed as either half full or half empty. That is to say, we can focus on the good things we have been given, or we can focus on all the things we have not been given. Our first reading from the Old Testament book of Joshua sets before the reader all that God had done for his chosen people. They had lived “beyond the River (i.e. the Euphrates) .. and they served other gods.” Then God took the initiative, bringing Abraham to the land of Canaan. He delivers them from slavery and brings them through the wilderness, across the river Jordan to Jericho and the promised land. During the course of their years in the wilderness many of the people had complained of all they did not have. They had forgotten what God had done for them.

Let us discern the loving hand of God in the course of events in life. It is quite possible to focus on all the things we would like to have had, and which we feel we have been denied. Rather, we ought keep our sight on the deeper reality, the loving hand of God giving so much to us — filling the glass rather than emptying it. At the heart of the universe and enveloping it is Love and Mercy. Let us live in the presence of this Mercy so as to be instruments of it to others.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Advent is here. What a marvellous time in which to renew your desire, your nostalgia, your real longing for Christ to come — for him to come every day to your soul in the Eucharist. The Church encourages us: Ecce veniet! — He is about to arrive!

Two men died for the faith after harsh treatment and exhaustion in the mines of Sardinia. One had been pope for five years, the other an antipope for 18. They died reconciled.

Pontian Pontian was a Roman who served as pope from 230 to 235. During his reign he held a synod which confirmed the excommunication of the great theologian Origen in Alexandria. Pontian was banished to exile by the Roman emperor in 235, and resigned so that a successor could be elected in Rome. He was sent to the “unhealthy” island of Sardinia, where he died of harsh treatment in 235. With him was Hippolytus (see below) with whom he was reconciled. The bodies of both martyrs were brought back to Rome and buried with solemn rites as martyrs.

Hippolytus As a presbyter in Rome, Hippolytus (the name means “a horse turned loose”) was at first “holier than the Church.” He censured the pope for not coming down hard enough on a certain heresy—calling him a tool in the hands of one Callistus, a deacon—and coming close to advocating the opposite heresy himself. When Callistus was elected pope, Hippolytus accused him of being too lenient with penitents, and had himself elected antipope by a group of followers. He felt that the Church must be composed of pure souls uncompromisingly separated from the world, and evidently thought that his group fitted the description. He remained in schism through the reigns of three popes. In 235 he was also banished to the island of Sardinia. Shortly before or after this event, he was reconciled to the Church, and died with Pope Pontian in exile. Hippolytus was a rigorist, a vehement and intransigent man for whom even orthodox doctrine and practice were not purified enough. He is, nevertheless, the most important theologian and prolific religious writer before the age of Constantine. His writings are the fullest source of our knowledge of the Roman liturgy and the structure of the Church in the second and third centuries. His works include many Scripture commentaries, polemics against heresies and a history of the world. A marble statue, dating from the third century, representing the saint sitting in a chair, was found in 1551. On one side is inscribed his table for computing the date of Easter, on the other a list of how the system works out until the year 224. Pope John XXIII installed the statue in the Vatican library.

“Christ, like a skilful physician, understands the weakness of men. He loves to teach the ignorant and the erring he turns again to his own true way. He is easily found by those who live by faith; and to those of pure eye and holy heart, who desire to knock at the door, he opens immediately. He does not disdain the barbarian, nor does he set the eunuch aside as no man. He does not hate the female on account of the woman’s act of disobedience in the beginning, nor does he reject the male on account of the man’s transgression. But he seeks all, and desires to save all, wishing to make all the children of God, and calling all the saints unto one perfect man” (Hippolytus, Treatise on Christ and Antichrist). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Children were brought to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” After he placed his hands on them, he went away. (Matthew 19:13-15)

God so near There is a mysterious, even breathtaking character to the universe, as it appears to religious man. I use the expression “religious man” advisedly, in the sense that man is generally “religious.” There are exceptions to this, such as modern secular man — which is to say, man as influenced by the secularity that has arisen from modern Western culture. Generally, though, man is religious. He acknowledges the reality of the Deity or deities, and the world’s dependence on the Power or powers above. He invokes divine intervention so as to avert or sway the course of the world. But despite the world being seen as the work of the divine in this or that sense, man very, very often sees the divine as distant. Man is in the world, and the world is the work of God, but God, the ultimate principle from which the world has come, remains far from him. One would expect that visible nature — the world — being the work and therefore the voice of God, would bring God near to man. But despite the world, God is typically perceived as ever distant. In fact, one can sustain a fairly logical case, provided the starting points are granted, for considering that there is no God at all. It is certainly the case that God is sufficiently distant as to make it easy for man to ignore him completely and to carry on in the world as if he did not exist. I choose to regard this intellectual position as further evidence of the perceived distance of God from man and the world. Yet man yearns for him, or for something like him that is more and greater than the things of this world, which provide him with earthly and more immediate satisfaction. So it is that we have the religions of man. Man and society yearn for the divine and his religions implement this yearning. At the same time God is out of our sight, hearing and touch. He is imagined in the practice of religion, but the reflective person knows that these are mere imaginings. The divine is out of earshot, and beyond our pictures of him. From man’s point of view he is, indeed, the Beyond. Is man, then, condemned to a fundamental frustration? Is life (as Satre and Camus insisted) therefore absurd and meaningless?

The real and true God has revealed himself to be a God of massive surprises. He has intervened and shown that he is a real and living Person overflowing with the love that yearns to be near. God is with us. He is close. More still, he says to us, come to me. Rudolf Otto wrote his book (The idea of the Holy — Das Heilige, 1917) showing the natural dread evoked by the Numinous. The Numinous is a mysterium tremendum. But what the God of Revelation says to man is, Come to me! He draws close to us, and says, Come! Further, he sustains us as we approach, and smiles as we enter his intimate company. This is surely the meaning of the Christian revelation, and in particular of the person and message of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man. This brings us to our Gospel today, so expressive of the entire meaning of divine revelation. Our Lord says of the little children, do not prevent them from approaching me, for it is persons like them who enter the Kingdom of my heavenly Father. “Children were brought to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ After he placed his hands on them, he went away” (Matthew 19:13-15). With Jesus Christ, puny man, man the sinner, man who is so vulnerable and weak, may approach the living and all-holy God with confidence and remain near to him. He who is the Son of God addresses us as his “friends.” I have not called you servants any more, he tells his disciples — I have called you friends. Elsewhere he says to them, “Come to me, all you who labour and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11: 28-30). The Word made flesh describes himself as meek and humble in heart! God is meek and humble before his creatures, and he invites each of his own to approach him with confidence. This is the true God. Man tends to have a completely false impression of God — if there is a God! — and it is because of the curse of sin.

Christ commands that we be like little children, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. The child tends to trust, and hopefully is docile. He docilely trusts and obeys. He stays close to his parent, and does not stray from him in wilful independence. God has revealed that he wants us to regard him as our Father, a loving and merciful Father, one to whom we can always go. Let us bring this grand message which is the good news of the Gospel, to modern secular man for whom God is very much out of sight. Let us be like the parents of our Gospel scene bringing their children to Jesus Christ to receive his blessing. This is what it is to be a Christian in the world.

“Let the little children alone, and do not stop them coming to me” People “brought little children to Jesus for him to lay his hands on them and say a prayer.” Imagine the power of that prayer said by Christ for a child! Our Lord loved children and the parents of children knew it and wanted him to give them his blessing. Our Lord makes it clear in the same passage that he loves and welcomes anyone who is like a child. We think of guilelessness, innocence, docility, trust — all the good attitudes of childhood that make a child loveable. These attitudes correspond to certain adult spiritual attitudes which are essential to the spiritual life and make the adult loveable to Christ. What are these attitudes? The most important “childlike” attitude is that of looking on God unfailingly as our Father, and on ourselves as his children. Christ came to enable us to be sons and daughters of his heavenly Father, sharing the Spirit of him who is the only-begotten Son. Saint after saint has stressed this truth of our divine filiation, our being adopted children of the Father. It is not only the foundation of our relationship with God, but it is also the foundation of our relationship with one another. God is our Father, with the stress on both words in the predicate — both “our” and “father”. We are brothers in Christ who look to God as the Father of us all.

Therefore let us strive to think and to live as children in Christ of our common Father. If we do this, Christ will warmly welcome us as he did the children who were presented to him. He will lay his hands on us, as it were, and pour his blessings down upon us. He will want us to be with him, and we on our part will love being with him.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Christmas. The carols sing Venite, venite, “O come ye, O come ye.” Let us go to him. He has just been born. After contemplating how Mary and Joseph care for the Child, I now dare to hint to you: Look at him again, gaze at him without ceasing.

Entrance Antiphon Ps 84 (83): 10-11 Turn your eyes, O God, our shield; and look on the face of your anointed one; one day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.

Collect O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire. 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.

Maximilian Kolbe was born in 1894 in Poland and became a Franciscan. He contracted tuberculosis and, though he recovered, he remained frail all his life. Before his ordination as a priest, Maximilian founded the Immaculata Movement devoted to Our Lady. After receiving a doctorate in theology, he spread the Movement through a magazine entitled "The Knight of the Immaculata" and helped form a community of 800 men. The movement is now a world-wide one. Maximilian went to Japan where he built a comparable monastery and then on to India where he furthered the Movement. In 1936 he returned home because of ill health. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he was imprisoned and released for a time. But in 1941 he was arrested again and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

On July 31, 1941, in reprisal for one prisoner's escape, ten men were chosen to die. The policy was to assemble all the prisoners from the block in the yard where they would stand at attention the whole day. If, by the end of the day, the escapee had not been recovered, ten others would be chosen at random to die in his place. By three o'clock the prisoner was still not found. One of the ten chosen to die was Francis Gajowniczek. Mr. Gajowniczek cried out, "My poor wife, my poor children! What will happen to my family!" Father Kolbe offered himself in Gajowniczek’s place. He was the last of the group to die, enduring two weeks of starvation, thirst, and neglect. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982. His feast day is August 14th.

Scripture today: Isaiah 56:1.6-7; Psalm 66; Romans 11:13-15.29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that Shroud of Turin

vicinity came to him, crying out, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession. Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us. He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. The woman came and knelt before him. Lord, help me! she said. He replied, It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs. Yes, Lord, she said, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered, Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed from that very hour. (Matthew 15: 21-28)

Faith With good reason Jesus Christ is commonly viewed as the embodiment and exemplar of kindness, compassion, consideration, sensitivity, and winning service. We may say, to use a secular description — and hopefully without disrespect, that he is the consummate gentleman. But in our Gospel today (Matthew 15: 21-28) we see him, in studied fashion, ignoring the pleas of one who is desperate for his attention. The pagan woman came after him insistently with her request to drive out the demon from her daughter. He ignored her despite her loud appeals, and made her wait even for so much as an answer, let alone for the granting of her request. Plainly, he was testing her faith. Her faith was persistent and it won the answer she was looking for. Perhaps with a smile full of kindness, our Lord said to her, “Woman, you have great faith. Let your wish be granted.” And from that moment her daughter was well again. The faith of the pagan woman amounted to an unyielding trust that our Lord had the power to do what she wanted of him, and the goodness to grant her request. She addressed him respectfully as “Son of David,” and as “Lord” (kurie). As the prayer of a pagan, it was magnificent — bold, respectful, humble, faith-filled, persistent. It shows the extent to which a natural religious faith, built on natural foundations such as the natural sense of God and on what can be plainly seen, can avail. Let us think of her when we think of those of other religions. We ought respect them, just as Christ commended the Canaanite woman for her faith. Her faith pleased him, and because of it he answered her prayer for aid. One wonders to what extent the world has been sustained by the prayers that have arisen from the hearts of individuals who do not know divine revelation, however poorly may have been their notions of the Deity. After all, how exact and sophisticated was the Canaanite woman’s notion of “the Son of David”? Further, the faith of the Canaanite woman ought also remind us of the supernatural blessing that is divine faith, that faith which comes as a gift from God, enabling and inclining us to believe fully in Jesus Christ. We receive this supernatural gift of faith from God through the ministry and sacraments of the Church, specifically at our Baptism.

We ought treasure the thought of this gift, much greater than a natural faith. Our faith is a supernatural gift enabling us to believe not only in the power of Jesus to answer our prayers, but to believe all that he revealed himself to be. It is a gift enabling and inclining us to live by faith in Christ’s word because that word comes from his lips, rather than living simply by sight. We do not believe simply on the basis of what we see and understand for ourselves. We receive this word of his, together with the revelation it contains, by means of the witness and teaching of the Church, his mystical body and envoy. Thus in our life of faith, the Church is our mother. The Church nurtures us in our faith in Jesus, and teaches us what to believe about him. Faith involves embracing that teaching with the intent to live according to it. It involves guarding that teaching in our hearts, and rejecting anything that could corrupt that teaching, or lessen our acceptance of it. Specifically, and pivotally, it means knowing and loving the Church’s doctrine. The faith of a Christian is not simply trust in the person of Jesus Christ — without much reference to his objective teaching. The faith of a Christian is indeed trust in the person of Jesus Christ, but this is manifested and guided by the full acceptance of the specifics of his teaching — and these specifics are set forth in the doctrines and dogmas of the Church. So the Christian faith is Creedal, which is to say it is shaped and nourished by the Christian Creed. There are definite, specific, objective truths which the Christian knows he must believe about Jesus Christ if he is to be a Christian at all. Those objective truths are encapsulated in the Creed. In St Luke’s Gospel our Lady is described as treasuring all these things and pondering them in her heart. That is what we ought be doing in respect to the Church’s own doctrinal expressions of her teaching. At Mass we commonly recite the Nicene Creed. The shorter Apostles’ Creed is the ancient Creed of the Church in Rome. It is customarily used in private prayer, and is often said at the beginning of the recitation of the Rosary. Let us cherish the Church’s Creed and make it a prayer, while meditating on it as the hallowed statement of our faith. As well as this, we ought read carefully the Church’s much fuller official expressions of the faith, her Catechisms and other formal statements of faith.

Years ago the Church produced her Catechism of the Catholic Church, the fullest that the Church has ever issued. I would recommend the frequent reading of this most important book. Beyond this I would recommend a careful reading of the ongoing teaching of the Pope of the day, so easy to do now, even by the Internet, and so profitable. The point is this. We ought nourish our lives with Christ’s revelation as it comes to us in Scripture, especially the Gospels, and in the Church’s official expressions of her Tradition. In today's Gospel our Lord commended the pagan woman for her faith. Let us for our part, cherish and nourish our Catholic and Christian faith.

Further Reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.170-171 (The language of faith)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although it pains us to admit it — and I ask God to increase that sorrow in us — you and I have our share in the death of Christ. For the sins of men were the hammer-blows which stitched him to the Cross with nails.

Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mass of the Day, August 15)

Entrance Antiphon Glorious things are spoken of you, O Mary, who today were exalted above the choirs of Angels into eternal triumph with Christ.

Collect O God, who, looking on the lowliness of the Blessed Virgin Mary, raised her to this grace, that your Only Begotten Son was born of her according to the flesh and that she was crowned this day with surpassing glory, grant through her prayers, that, saved by the mystery of your redemption, we may merit to be exalted by you on high. 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.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Rev 12: 1 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon beneath her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

Let us all rejoice in the Lord, as we celebrate the feast day in honour of the Virgin Mary, at whose Assumption the Angels rejoice and praise the Son of God.

Collect Almighty ever-living God, who assumed the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of your Son, body and soul into heavenly glory, grant, we pray, that, always attentive to the things that are above, we may merit to be sharers of her glory. 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.

On November 1, 1950, Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary to be a dogma of faith: “We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma that the immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life,

was assumed body and soul to heavenly glory.” The pope proclaimed this dogma only after a broad consultation of bishops, theologians and laity. There were few dissenting voices. What the pope solemnly declared was already a common belief in the Catholic Church. We find homilies on the Assumption going back to the sixth century. In following centuries the Eastern Churches held steadily to the doctrine, but some authors in the West were hesitant. However, by the thirteenth century there was universal agreement. The feast was celebrated under various names (Commemoration, Dormition, Passing, Assumption) from at least the fifth or sixth century. Scripture does not give an account of Mary’s Assumption into heaven. Nevertheless, Revelation 12 speaks of a woman who is caught up in the battle between good and evil. Many see this woman as God’s people. Since Mary best embodies the people of both Old and New Testament, her Assumption can be seen as an exemplification of the woman’s victory. Furthermore, in 1 Corinthians 15:20 Paul speaks of Christ’s resurrection as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Since Mary is closely associated with all the mysteries of Jesus’ life, it is not surprising that the Holy Spirit has led the Church to belief in Mary’s share in his glorification. So close was she to Jesus on earth, she must be with him body and soul in heaven. In the light of the Assumption of Mary, it is easy to pray her Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) with new meaning. In her glory she proclaims the greatness of the Lord and finds joy in God her saviour. God has done marvels to her and she leads others to recognize God’s holiness. She is the lowly handmaid who deeply reverenced her God and has been raised to the heights. From her position of strength she will help the lowly and the poor find justice on earth and she will challenge the rich and powerful to distrust wealth and power as a source of happiness.

“In the bodily and spiritual glory which she possesses in heaven, the Mother of Jesus continues in this present world as the image and first flowering of the Church as she is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise, Mary shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come (cf. 2 Peter 3:10), as a sign of certain hope and comfort for the pilgrim People of God” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 68). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Apocalypse 11: 19, 12: 1-6.10; Psalm 44; 1 Cor 15: 20-26; Luke 1: 39-56

At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Shroud of Turin

Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished! And Mary said: My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants for ever, even as he said to our fathers. Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home. (Luke 1:39-56)

“So let us thank God for giving us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor.15:54-57)

Glory ahead One of the intriguing questions about the history and nature of man concerns what it is that nourishes the religious instinct. What is it in man that constitutes the natural spring of his religion? — and religion is virtually universal. There is be no single answer to this — as the study of religions and anthropology show. But we can surely propose that the very transitoriness of life and the promptings of a man’s conscience are obvious factors. That is to say, the realization that life is passing and will end, and the thought which his guilty conscience has of a future judgment, will prompt many to turn to God — however he may be imagined. Every moment that comes, in an instant is gone. That moment that has come and which is now gone has taken the individual nearer his end. Life passes, and passes quickly. It is ever rushing on, so silently, so imperceptibly, so truly. It cannot be stopped, it cannot pause, it cannot proceed more slowly. In fact, it can come to a sudden end, like a car that without warning passes over and into the chasm. Life is essentially transitory. It is ultimately unpredictable. In view of this passing character of life, it is natural for man to think of the future. So, if he is wise he will ponder on his end. He can think of it even when he is quite young — say, in his mid teens. Looking ahead, the teenager can allow the coming stages of life to pass before his mind’s eye. He will be going to university, embarking on a career, getting married and raising his family, passing middle age and on to say, the age of seventy or so. He asks himself, What will happen then? What will my life have to show for itself? I sense the judgment of my conscience now — I will surely sense it then. Indeed, he ruminates, this will prefigure a Judgment to come. There will be a Reckoning. Indeed, there is a Reckoning even now. So he might turn to God and begin to live in his presence. These are sobering and perhaps fearful thoughts, and can give to natural religion a gloomy and anxious character. If all we had to go on was natural reflection on what we see, we might have much to fear in facing the transitoriness of life, the fact of sin and the broken character of life.

But a great light and a beautiful melody has come from all that God has revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. We can be hopeful. The broken character of life, it has been divinely revealed, is due to sin — but a Redeemer has come and we can place our hopes in him. It is revealed that if we are faithful to him we have the future prospect of glory in body and soul. Our Redeemer has gone ahead of us. Further, in the person of his own sinless mother, he has provided a lustrous exemplar of all that lies ahead. She reigns as the Queen Mother in heaven, glorious in body and soul — and all because of the work of her incomparable Son. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our mother and model in faith, illustrates the consoling prospect ahead of the Church’s children. Our Lady, the Church has solemnly defined, was taken by God body and soul into heaven at the end of her life, full of glory. This is because no sin touched her soul at any instant from the first moment of her conception to her last breath on this earth. It is sin that brought death to man, the Original Sin of our first parents, and our own personal sins. By a singular grace, Mary was preserved from all sin and she co-operated with this grace. She did not sin, and so death could not hold her. She was assumed body and soul in glory, following in the glorious train of her divine Son. Mary, the mother of God made man, does not await a future bodily glory, as do other holy souls who have attained the glory and bliss of heaven. She already possesses it. Those who are saved — those canonized by the Church, and those not canonized, enjoy the bliss of God in their spirits, and will regain a glorious bodily condition at the end, following the Final Judgment. But Mary’s final state in body and soul is already attained. She already enjoys it, as does — in a far more exalted sense, of course — her divine Son. He is divine, she is entirely human. By his passion, death and resurrection, Christ in his risen bodily humanity re-entered the glory that had been his as God from all eternity. She, our entirely human mother, attained her glory by fully cooperating during her human life with the graces won for her by her divine Son. She shows us the way we must follow, and the end that awaits us if we are faithful.

If we cooperate daily and generously with the grace coming to us from the redeeming work of Jesus, we too will receive glory in body and soul. This bodily glory will not come at the end of our lives as it did with Mary our mother, but at the end of human history at the General Judgment of mankind. In the meantime we must strive for holiness while life is granted us. Let us keep our eyes on our glorious Mother Mary, asking her to help us to be faithful to God’s will here on earth so as to share in his glory for ever in heaven. This future glory should give us undying hope.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liturgical Season	Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
18th Week of Ordinary Time A-1		1	2	3	4	5 Dedication St Mary Major Basilica	6 Transfiguration of the Lord
19th Week of Ordinary Time A-1	7	8 St Mary MacKillop	9	10 St Lawrence	11	12	13
20th Week of Ordinary Time A-1	14	15 Assumption Blessed Virgin Mary