October2 in Year A 11

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time to Monday of the 31st Wk in 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 October is: "For the terminally ill, that in their sufferings they may be sustained by faith in God and by the love of others."

His mission intention is: "That the celebration of World Mission Sunday may increase in the People of God the passion for evangelization and the support of missionary activity through prayer and economic aid for the poorest Churches."

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Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 17 (16): 6, 8 To you I call; for you will surely heed me, O God; turn your ear to me; hear my words. Guard me as the apple of your eye; in the shadow of your wings protect me.

Collect Almighty ever-living God, grant that we may always conform our will to yours and serve your majesty in sincerity of heart. 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.

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

Scripture today: Isaiah 45: 1.4-6; Psalm 95; 1 Thessalonians 1: 1-5; Matthew 22: 15-21

Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap Jesus in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. Teacher, they said, we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax. They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription? Caesar's, they replied. Then he said to them, Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. (Matthew 22: 15-21)

God and Caesar In our Gospel passage today, our Lord answers with ease the trap set by the Pharisees and the Herodians. His answer addresses a daily dimension of the life of human beings: “Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” By God’s plan we live in a world in which various agents of authority necessarily bear on and govern our actions. There cannot be a functioning society without authority. Therefore, God wants us to respect legitimate authority because in the nature of the Fr. Ted Tyler

case this is manifestly the will of him who is the Creator and Sustainer of all societies. Christ’s directive, “Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” expresses this fact, but now as coming from the lips of God become man himself. So not only is this the dictate of reason. God has declared in Jesus Christ that it is part of our duty to God to fulfil our responsibilities to society. By divine disposition, society could not work without the exercise of authority, and without respect for it. We go to work each day, and this involves working in some sense under an authority to which we must answer. Citizens answer to Governments, but, as the uprisings of the Middle East and north Africa during 2011 indicated, even Islamic dictatorships will eventually answer to their citizenry. If we have our own business, we must answer to society’s regulations. If we are a company director, we must answer not only to the law but to shareholders. If we exercise a profession, there are social regulations and laws that are to be observed. If we are an employee, we answer to our employer. The Christian has it from Christ that we are to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, meaning that we are to respect legitimate human authority and its claims upon us. How do we best do this? We do this precisely by recognising and accepting that legitimate civil and social authority comes ultimately from God. We must learn to find God in daily life and serve him there, including in obedience to the legitimate authority which every day is exercised over us in social life.

Every time we are called upon to do this — and the occasions are numerous — it is an occasion for union with God, even if the one exercising legitimate authority is himself irreligious, atheistic, or personally immoral. Genuine religion essentially involves obedience to the authority of God. Tests will come, and they will be the moments to remember our Lord in the presence of Pontius Pilate, the pagan civil governor. Our Lord said that any authority that Pilate had, came to him from above. It was his heavenly Father that our Lord was obeying when he accepted the authority of Pilate unto death, despite Pilate’s unworthiness and injustice. We must learn to recognise God, not in the person of Caesar, but in the lawful authority he exercises — even if we find ourselves repeatedly disagreeing with how well that authority is exercised. Of course, if authority is exercised unlawfully and goes against the law of God, we cannot obey it even if it means suffering — even death if need be, as the martyrs show us. On such occasions we render to God what belongs to God, bearing witness to the vocation of society to do the same. So the Christian must render to Caesar what belongs lawfully to Caesar, and serve God in doing precisely this. At the same time, he has the vocation to render to God the things that belong to God. Not only is this the vocation of the individual Christian, but it is the vocation of society itself. What is it that belongs to God? Everything belongs to God. Everything we do individually and as a society ought be done according to the law of God and out of love for him. This is a wide field, and to treat it properly is beyond the scope of this comment. But there is one aspect of this which is very relevant to the situation of society today and which we ought think of deeply. It concerns the secular character of society. Man, and therefore society, is obliged to acknowledge God as the Lord of all. Now, God is scarcely acknowledged in a professedly secular culture such as ours. God is regarded as a private notion. He is relegated to the status of being no more than a personal opinion. As such he is regarded as bearing on the private life of the religious individual and his own affairs, but not on society in general and in a public sense. Publicly, God is absent.

In this situation, the lay member of Christ’s faithful, whose mission in life is to live and work in the secular world, must bear witness to the authority of God in all aspects of the world’s life, whether public or private. It means living one’s life in a way that is consistent with the Catholic Faith, and striving to help both individuals and society at large to accept God as an objective reality, with public and private claims on our common, social obedience. The lay member of the Church has the mission to help society, and to help those exercising authority, to render to God what is God’s, even if there is uncertainty as to what really belongs, objectively, to God. This is a tremendous task, but essential to the work of the laity, and of inestimable benefit to the world.

Further Reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church: no. 2234-2246 (Authority in civil society)

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God has a special right over us, his children: it is the right to our response to his love, in spite of our failings. This inescapable truth puts us under an obligation which we cannot shirk. But it also gives us complete confidence: we are instruments in the hands of God, instruments that he relies on every day. That is why, every day, we struggle to serve him.

Born

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

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Jesus Shroud of Turin

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

Greed In an interview conducted by Phil Donahue in 1979, the well-known economist Milton Friedman spoke on the role of greed and virtue in the development of society. Donahue put to Friedman that in the face of the widespread mal-distribution of wealth and the desperate plight of underdeveloped countries, ought not capitalism be seriously questioned as a proper driving force of society’s economic life? That is, Donahue added (as if it were an explanation of capitalism), ought not greed be rejected as the fuel of economic life? Friedman answered, “Well, first of all, tell me — is there some society you know that does not run on greed? You think that Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think that China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate endeavours. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.” Friedman went on to say that governments do not reward virtue but usefulness. Self-interest drives the whole of society. Now, of course, Friedman does not here define “greed.” Doubtless he was using the word in the sense of self-interest as opposed to external (as in government) direction. Of course, properly understood, self-interest is indeed a fundamental principle of human life. It is for legitimate “self-interest” that we work for our living. But by “greed” we usually mean that self-interest which cares little for our neighbour — and, sadly, what Friedman says of the life of society being driven by “greed” seems to any observer, to a point all too true. If there are not laws regulating self-interest, society will be driven by greed. But Friedman appears to be saying that, well, “greed” may not a good thing in itself but it is a fact of life. It gets society up and running and in the business of economic improvement. So, run with it, encourage it, and regulate it if you will, but recognize that it is operating everywhere, including within purportedly socialist regimes. The only question is, what is the best system for “greed” to achieve its best overall social results — and Friedman champions the capitalist system. So, basically greed is good.

One of the points John Henry Newman made about human thought is that one’s first principles are of decisive importance for the positions that people take up. The logic of two persons may be equally good, but they may be of utterly divergent views. This will be because of the divergent starting points of their thought, their basic differences in fundamental assumptions. Perhaps we could put it this way: the basic image, concept or value for which a person opts will govern the working out of his thought. If one allows that “greed” is, well, a mixed blessing in moral terms but very useful for economic development and so in effect a good thing, that basic idea will shape one’s system of thought. But if one starts with a different image, concept or value, opts for that and determines to allow it to shape one’s system of thought, then obviously it will have very different practical implications. I once knew an academic teaching at Sydney University’s department of social studies. In his research he strove to make the image of the Good Samaritan in Christ’s parable the basis and centre of his intellectual system. At the time I knew him he was preparing to begin doctoral work, and this image was going to be at the heart of his research. During the latter years of the first decade of the twenty-first century there was a very serious economic upheaval across the globe. Pope Benedict XVI had something to say about this, and it appeared not only in his addresses but in his first Encyclical. He said that at root, moral principles were involved in this upheaval — and indeed, that “greed” had been a significant factor. All of this brings us to our Gospel passage today, in which our Lord warns us about greed: “Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Jesus replied, Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you? Then he said to them, Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:13-21). I have seen documentaries of businessmen who have resolved to build their commercial careers not on greed, but on Christ-like service. They have resolved to plant Christ and his teaching on love at the centre of their business activity.

Our Lord tells us once again — as he does repeatedly in other parts of the Gospels — that we must bear in mind the Last Things we shall all face, and which mankind as a whole will face. I refer to the judgment of God. “God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich towards God” (Luke 12: 13-21). Let this be what drives not only our private lives, but the life of society — as influenced by our witness.

“Abraham ...(was) convinced that God had power to do what he had promised” One of the striking features of some Protestant communions has been their emphasis on the Old Testament, at least in terms of popular preaching and private devotion. By contrast, many Catholics who have the fulness of the truth of the Scriptures available to them have looked too little to the Old Testament, and have failed to gain the inspiration and spiritual nourishment which — in the light of the Gospels, the New Testament and the Church's teaching — is there for them. Our Lord himself constantly referred to the Old Testament. So does St Paul in our first reading today. In that passage from Romans (Romans 4: 20-25), St Paul comments on Abraham. What he says about this great religious figure ought inspire us to read more about him in the book of Genesis. Abraham’s great feature, as St Paul instructs us, was his faith “that God had the power to do what he had promised.” It was this faith that made him so pleasing in the sight of God and led him to be so steadfast in doing God’s will. God had declared to him his saving plan (at least incipiently), a plan that promised great blessings, a plan that was realizable not by Abraham himself of course, but by God and God alone. But it required Abraham’s active cooperation, and this he gave, inspired by the hope that was based on his faith in God’s word and power to achieve his promises.

Mary the mother of Jesus was the woman par excellence of faith, and in this she towered beyond her heroic ancestor, Abraham. Now, what aspect of God’s plan ought be the daily object of our faith? St Paul writes in one of his letters, “This is the will of God, your sanctification.” That is the great and glorious promise for each of us and the blessing ahead, provided we cooperate with God’s plan. But we must, like Abraham, believe that God has the power to do what he has promised. He can make us saints. Let us pray for this faith and exercise it daily.

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God expects his instruments to do what they can to be fit and ready: you should strive to make sure you are always fit and ready.

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

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

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

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

Luke By Christ’s design for his Church following Pentecost, there emerged different groupings or orders of his disciples, as we might call them. All the baptized shared in the life of Christ — all were, to use St Paul’s phrase, “in Christ.” But, for instance, not all were constituted “Apostles” by the Spirit, nor were all constituted “pastors.” As the Church later expressed the matter in her formal doctrine, all the baptized share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, but some do so in essentially different ways from others. This Fr. Ted Tyler

difference is manifested, though not restricted to, specific functions. The ordained priest celebrates Mass, administers the Sacraments of Penance, the Anointing of the Sick and often Confirmation. He shepherds Christ’s faithful and sanctifies them with the life of Christ. With these heavenly blessings, the lay faithful characteristically are the instruments of Christ’s presence in the world of family, friends, community, culture, work, government and international life. The lay faithful are called to bear witness in the world to the one and only Saviour. They bring the world into union with him, and hence into the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever be their order or kind of participation in Christ, all are called by Christ to holiness and mission. We gain a glimpse of this in our Gospel passage today, in which “the Lord Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, ‘The harvest is abundant but the labourers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out labourers for his harvest. Go on your way; behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.’” Let us think of those seventy-two for a moment — were all of them destined to be “pastors”? At least one of them was destined to be an “Apostle” — one of the Twelve, no less, and hence an “Apostle” in a sense more special than that in which St Paul would be an “Apostle.” I refer to Matthias who would be elected to replace Judas (Acts 1:26). He had been in our Lord’s “company all through the time when the Lord Jesus came and went among us, from the time when John baptized to the day when he, Jesus, was taken from us” (Acts 1: 21)

That was Matthias. Perhaps some of them were destined to be “pastors” of the future Church and in time would be endowed by the Spirit (through the action and ministry of the Church) with such spiritual powers as the celebration of the Eucharist and the forgiveness of sins. But I am sure that the majority of these seventy-two were what we would now call future “lay” members of Christ’s faithful. It hardly needs saying that they would scarcely have all been future clergy, endowed with the Sacrament of Orders. But our Lord sent them all out on mission before him, all seventy-two. All Christ’s disciples are, in virtue of their very discipleship, engaged in doing what our Lord had come to do — which is to make disciples of all. In Matthew’s Gospel, our Lord’s final charge to his disciples was a charge given not only to the Eleven, but to all who had gathered on the Mountain in Galilee: “you, therefore, must go and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19). All of this brings us to Saint Luke, the inspired author of the third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles, and the one commemorated by the Church on this, his feast day. Luke was not one of the Twelve. He does not seem to have been among those, like Matthias, who were with our Lord during his public ministry, nor among, say, the seventy-two (although we cannot be sure, of course). He was a later convert, it seems, and not a future “pastor,” or ordained priest. He was a lay collaborator of St Paul, a medical man by profession, and one for whom Jesus Christ was his all. He, a “lay” member of Christ’s faithful as we might now categorize him, has had and will have an incalculable influence on the life of the Church and all the faithful till the end of the world. This influence will be exercised through his inspired writings — his Gospel, and his account of the infant Church. Innumerable persons come to know Christ through St Luke. Inasmuch as the Gospels are the most important part of all the Scriptures, including the New Testament, a case could be made for thinking of St Luke’s spiritual influence over history as equalling and, dare we say, perhaps even surpassing that of his incomparable companion, St Paul.

The point here is that St Luke is a model “lay” member of Christ’s faithful. He is an example for all time of how all of Christ’s faithful are called to seek holiness by means of union with Jesus Christ, sharing also in his mission — each according to his vocation. St Luke did this, not precisely in the way that his companion and superior, St Paul, did it. Nor did he do it in the way that Simon Peter, the Rock of the Church, did it — for his was a different vocation. He did it as what we would now call a “lay” baptized member of the Church, and as such his contribution to the life of the Church, specifically through his inspired writings, was and ever will be, simply incalculable. Let us all take note of this.

“Cure those in it who are sick, and say, “The kingdom of God is very near to you.” On this feast of St Luke, the author of Fr. Ted Tyler

the third Gospel and of the Acts, we are presented with the scene in which “the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him, in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself was to visit.” Let us ponder on the content of the message they were to deliver: “The Kingdom of God is very near to you” (Luke 10: 1-9). What is the Kingdom of God? It is, of course, God’s kingship, his reign, his rule — but these terms are general and their content can appear to be abstract. What is it, specifically? The Kingdom of God in the first instance is the very Person of Christ in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily. His life involved nothing other than the fulfilment of the will of his heavenly Father. God’s Kingdom comes to a person supremely when that person is, to use St Paul’s phrase, “in Christ.” God’s Kingdom is at work in a person’s life when that person lives out his life in a manner worthy of his being in union with Christ. When the Church proclaims that the Kingdom of God is near, what is meant above all is that Christ is with us, that he is near. In him God and his rule are nigh.

As St Paul writes, in Christ is given every heavenly blessing. As St Ignatius Loyola expresses it in his great prayer to Christ in his Spiritual Exercises, take all else, O Lord, but give me your love and your grace, and this will be enough. Let us then make Christ our all. In him we receive all the promises of God, and without him all is as nothing.

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I have come to see that every Hail Mary, every greeting to Our Lady, is a new beat of a heart in love.

(October 19) Saint John de Brébeuf and Saint Isaac Jogues, priests and martyrs, and their companions, martyrs

Isaac Jogues (1607-1646): Isaac Jogues and his companions were the first martyrs of the North American continent officially North American Martyrs

recognized by the Church. As a young Jesuit, Isaac Jogues, a man of learning and culture, taught literature in France. He gave up that career to work among the Huron Indians in the New World, and in 1636 he and his companions, under the leadership of John de Brébeuf, arrived in Quebec. The Hurons were constantly warred upon by the Iroquois, and in a few years Father Jogues was captured by the Iroquois and imprisoned for 13 months. His letters and journals tell how he and his companions were led from village to village, how they were beaten, tortured and forced to watch as their Huron converts were mangled and killed. An unexpected chance for escape came to Isaac Jogues through the Dutch, and he returned to France, bearing the marks of his sufferings. Several fingers had been cut, chewed or burnt off. Pope Urban VIII gave him permission to offer Mass with his mutilated hands: "It would be shameful that a martyr of Christ be not allowed to drink the Blood of Christ." Welcomed home as a hero, Father Jogues might have sat back, thanked God for his safe return and died peacefully in his homeland. But his zeal led him back once more to the fulfilment of his dreams. In a few months he sailed for his missions among the Hurons. In 1646 he and Jean de Lalande, who had offered his services to the missioners, set out for Iroquois country in the belief that a recently signed peace treaty would be observed. They were captured by a Mohawk war party, and on October 18 Father Jogues was tomahawked and beheaded. Jean de Lalande was killed the next day at Ossernenon, a village near Albany, New York. The first of the Jesuit missionaries to be martyred was René Goupil who, with Lalande, had offered his services as an oblate. He was tortured along with Isaac Jogues in 1642, and was tomahawked for having made the Sign of the Cross on the brow of some children.

Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649): Jean de Brébeuf was a French Jesuit who came to Canada at the age of 32 and laboured there for 24 years. He went back to France when the English captured Quebec (1629) and expelled the Jesuits, but returned to his missions four years later. Although medicine men blamed the Jesuits for a smallpox epidemic among the Hurons, Jean remained with them. He composed catechisms and a dictionary in Huron, and saw 7,000 converted before his death. He was captured by the Iroquois and died after four hours of extreme torture at Sainte Marie, near Georgian Bay, Canada.

Father Anthony Daniel, working among Hurons who were gradually becoming Christian, was killed by Iroquois on July 4, 1648. His body was thrown into his chapel, which was set on fire.

Gabriel Lalemant had taken a fourth vow—to sacrifice his life to the Indians. He was horribly tortured to death along with Father Brébeuf.

Father Charles Garnier was shot to death as he baptized children and catechumens during an Iroquois attack.

Father Noel Chabanel was killed before he could answer his recall to France. He had found it exceedingly hard to adapt to mission life. He could not learn the language, the food and life of the Indians revolted him, plus he suffered spiritual dryness during his whole stay in Canada. Yet he made a vow to remain until death in his mission. These eight Jesuit martyrs of North America were canonized in 1930. "My confidence is placed in God who does not need our help for accomplishing his designs. Our single endeavour should be to give ourselves to the work and to be faithful to him, and not to spoil his work by our shortcomings" (from a letter of Isaac Jogues to a Jesuit friend in France, September 12, 1646, a month before he died). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Jesus said, Understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house Shroud of Turin

be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. Peter asked, Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone? The Lord answered, Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, 'My master is taking a long time in coming,' and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers. That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. (Luke 12: 39-48)

The Judgment It is recognized that the English philosopher, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftsbury (1671-1713), was a considerable influence on 18th century thought in Britain, France and Germany. He was part of an important circle of English freethinkers, and he influenced French deists such as Voltaire and Rousseau, while also corresponding with Locke, Leibniz and Bayle. Especially important was Shaftsbury’s notion of the moral sense. He was insistent that moral goodness is like beauty. Further, he wished the moral agent to be attracted to virtue for its own sake, and not merely out of self-interest. Accordingly, one of the things Shaftsbury was especially critical of was the motive of the fear of punishment in the leading of a virtuous life — which is to say, the fear of the judgment of God. He wrote that this, in effect, was to lead a moral life out of self-interest. Nearly a century and a half after Shaftsbury’s death, John Henry Newman was writing his Idea of a University, and he referred to elements of Shaftsbury’s thought to illustrate his points about conscience as a foundation of religion (Discourse VIII, no.7). In his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), Shaftsbury reduces virtue, Newman writes, to a form of beauty. This means that it is taste and not conscience which determines what is virtuous. At times Shaftsbury formally gives the superiority to taste over conscience: “After all,” he writes, “tis not merely what we call principle, but taste, which governs men.” Newman’s point is that by eliminating the fear of (God’s) punishment from the moral life, Shaftsbury put God out of the moral life and eliminated “morality,” strictly so called, as such. A sense of the judgment of God is very important for the preservation of the moral sense and for the pursuit of a moral course. When all is said and done, the simple truth of the judgment of God is momentously important for the moral life of the individual and of society. When we turn to revealed religion we see that the judgment of God pervades all its pages. God wants man to act morally, and he threatens judgment and punishment if he does not.

I do not mean that it is the judgment of God after death which is always in evidence in Holy Writ, for in the Old Testament more often than not it is God’s judgment as expressed in the events of this life which is in special evidence. This is not the case in the Gospels. In the teaching of Jesus Christ, the judgment of God after death and at the end of time receives frequent and emphatic stress — and our Gospel today is one such instance. This fact alone, the fact of divine revelation featuring the judgment of God so often, and especially in the Gospels, ought illustrate how important this is for the moral life. A parallel may be seen in the sanctions of society — how often would the rules of the road be observed were it not for the sanctions involved? In our Gospel today, as ever our Lord makes use of a parable. First of all he asks, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.” All that we have and all that we are, comes from God and belongs to him — he can withdraw it if ever and whenever he pleases. Our task is to be a “faithful and wise manager” of the responsibilities he has given us in life. If we are this, then a great reward will be ours: “he will put him in charge of all his possessions.” But our Lord gives even more emphasis to the wicked and neglectful servant, and to what is coming to him. “But suppose the servant says to himself, 'My master is taking a long time in coming,' and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers” (Luke 12: 39-48). The Judgment of God! There can never be anything like it! How odd and how foolish to be nonchalant in respect to it, for it will dwarf all the tests of this life and will bring to light everything we have done, thought, willed or said. We must be ever ready, for we know not the hour when our Master will come. How wise so to live as if the present day were to be our last.

There is a prayer commonly said at the end of each decade of the Rosary, after the Glory be to the Father prayer. It is said to be the prayer taught by the Blessed Virgin Mary to the children at Fatima. Notice the prominence of the judgment of God: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, and bring all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of your mercy.” Every day passes quickly. Where do our days lead us to? They lead us to the end of life, and after the end comes the Judgment of God on all we have done. Let us resolve to be ready.

“You must not let sin reign in your mortal bodies” One of the truly notable features of our Western culture and civilization is its attitude to sin. Classically, and due to the influence of Judaeo-Christian religious thought, the realization of sin has been deeply embedded in our Western thought, perhaps more so than in the other systems of thought in the world. But this great gain has been seriously weakened over the past few centuries. Gradually the realization of the objective reality of sin has been eroded. In a public sense sin has been cast into oblivion. It is out of sight, and so out of mind. In philosophical thought it has been relegated to the status of a subjective fixation. So from the Western mind there has spawned systems of thought (communism, for example) that banish sin from the human project. The result is that sin has a clear run, for it is not combated. Against this, St Paul in our first reading for today has a resounding response: “You must not let sin reign in your mortal bodies or command your obedience to bodily passions” (Romans 6: 12-18). Our war against sin is the war of our life, and it is to be meticulous and unrelenting: “you must not let any part of your body turn into an unholy weapon fighting on the side of sin.” We must take up the work of combating sin in all its detail, especially deliberate venial sin. It will be impossible to attain holiness of life if we are not recognising deliberate venial sin, obtaining God’s pardon for it, and turning away from it.

Our fight against sin has to be in earnest, as St Paul makes clear: “you should make ever part of your body into a weapon fighting on the side of God.” Every day let us renew our baptismal promise to renounce sin and to live in Christ and his teaching.

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Our life — a Christian’s life — has to be as ordinary as this: trying every day to do well those very things it is our duty to do; carrying out our divine mission in the world by fulfilling the little duty of each moment. Or rather, struggling to fulfill it. Sometimes we don’t manage, and when night comes, in our examination, we’ll have to tell Our Lord, “I am not offering you virtues; today I can only offer you defects. But with your grace I will be able to count myself a victor.”

If anyone knew rejection, ridicule and disappointment, it was today’s saint. But such trials only brought Maria Bertilla Boscardin closer to God and more determined to serve him. Born in Italy in 1888, the young girl lived in fear of her father, a violent man prone to jealousy and drunkenness. Her schooling was limited so that she could spend more time helping at home and working in the fields. She showed few talents and was often the butt of jokes. In 1904 she joined the Sisters of St. Dorothy and was assigned to work in the kitchen, bakery and laundry. After some time Maria received nurses’ training and began working in a hospital with children suffering from diphtheria. There the young nun seemed to find her true vocation: nursing very ill and disturbed children. Later, when the hospital was taken over by the military in World War I, Sister Maria Bertilla fearlessly cared for patients amidst the threat of constant air raids and bombings. She died in 1922 after suffering for many years from a painful tumour. Some of the patients she had nursed many years before were present at her canonization in 1961. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Jesus said, I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. (Luke 12: 49-53)

Division The natural thing is that an infant will love his parent because he has experienced the love of his parent for him. It is instinctive on the part of the parent to love his or her child, and it is instinctive for the child to love his or her parent in return. As the child grows, normally the love between the two will grow, but of course this dynamic can complicate. It is not impossible for there to be a souring of this love and, indeed, an end to it. This may be due to the emerging selfishness of the child, or of the parent, or of Fr. Ted Tyler

both, or for various other reasons. But the more natural thing is that the mutual love that begins in the infancy of the child grows and remains during life and easily survives various upsets in the relationship. It could be said that it generally faces better prospects than, say, the love between man and wife. After all, while the parent-child relationship has grown from the infancy of the child, the love between husband and wife begins in early adulthood when a new beginning and serious adjustments have to be made by each. Much work lies ahead as each enters into the other. I refer to all this by way of introduction to the relationship between creation as embodied in man, and the Creator. Creation, and man in particular, is the “child” of God — he is the Father of all that is, seen and unseen. Moreover, he did not merely create things as in a single act — analogous to the begetting of a child by the parents — but he sustains all things in their allotted span of time, moment by moment. In referring to the Creator, I refer to the triune God who has been revealed to us not only in his creation, but above all in Jesus Christ the Son of God made man. God is the Father of all, and he creates and sustains all things out of love. The natural thing, then, is for creation and in particular man to respond in love to this ineffable and wondrous Father of all that is. What we would expect to see is a world in harmony with the loving God on whom it constantly depends. The natural thing would be to love God. But what do we see? We see some love certainly, but also a lot of indifference and open rebellion. It is, we might say ironically, the strangest thing in the world.

In the Prologue of the Gospel of St John, we are given a panoramic view of the Incarnation. “In the beginning” — reminding us of the creation account of the first chapter of Genesis — “was the Word.” That Word had featured in Genesis when God spoke and created the world. John tells us that “the Word was with God and the Word was God” — and that “all things came into being through him.” Despite this, despite the fact that “He was in the world and the world came into being through him” — despite this — “the world did not know him.” This, as I said, is the strangest of things. “He came to what was his own, and his own did not accept him” (John 1: 1-11). “The Word was made flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). From our Lord’s arrival — from his first days in Bethlehem, no less — he received not only a welcome, but fierce opposition. As a harbinger of Christ’s life and death, Herod sought to kill him, but as the king’s henchmen descended for their catch, the eagle flew. Holy Simeon had predicted that the Child would be a sign of tremendous contradiction, and once the public ministry commenced the prophecy was seen to be in fulfilment. Slowly but inexorably, with Satan working hard, the net encircled the Messiah. They did not know it, but he knew that the events they were orchestrating in such hateful opposition were all according to the divine plan of redemption. The mission of the Messiah would be fulfilled precisely in and through their lethal opposition. And opposition it certainly was, a great swell of opposition to the God who was present in the flesh among them. It is the strangest of things! All this brings us to our Gospel today in which our Lord predicts opposition and contestation over his Person and message: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Luke 12: 49-53).

That is to say, God in Jesus Christ will attract not only love but unyielding opposition. It is announced that the Pope will visit England, and immediately a fierce opposition begins to mount amid the love with which the news is received. This is because of what the Pope stands for — he stands for God and for Jesus Christ the revelation of God. It is announced that the Pope will visit Germany, and immediately 100 members of the German parliament announce they will not attend the Pope’s address to that parliament. This is because of what the Pope stands for — the Person and law of Jesus Christ. Let us never be dismayed at the opposition which Christian witness attracts — it is all, as we would say colloquially, “par for the course.” As with Jesus, so with us.

“For the wage paid by sin is death; the present given by God is eternal life” An enormous difference is made to life if there is clarity of vision. If one is driving a car in plenty of traffic there may be catastrophic consequences if one does not have a clear vision of what is ahead, and of the consequences of making certain choices. We all know this, and one of the signs of immaturity and Fr. Ted Tyler

inexperience is the lack of appreciation of this fact. A youthful and inexperienced driver may take no heed of the danger in speeding when somewhat drunk. He has no clarity of vision — he does not see the consequences of his choices. In our first reading today (Romans 6: 19-23) St Paul puts before us very clearly the consequences of certain basic choices in life. The options, to one degree or another, are these: putting yourself at “the service of vice and immorality,” or putting yourself “at the service of your sanctification.” We can allow ourselves to be “slaves of sin”, or allow ourselves to be “made slaves of God.” Every day we will be caught up in one or the other of these two choices: God or sin. Whatever route we follow will be our own responsibility. But whatever it is, there will be consequences. So it is of the utmost importance that we have clarity of vision as to what the choices are and the consequences of those choices. The consequence, St Paul tells us, of sin is death. The gift given by God to the one who chooses him “is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Too few people attain clarity of vision in respect to this fundamental and pivotal issue. The choice made by our first parents for sin rather than for God had consequences far beyond their own personal lives. Christ, the new Adam, engaged in the drama of making all things new by his choices, expressed above all in his Passion and Death.

By being placed in Christ at our baptism we can make life-giving choices, renewed daily in all our inner and outer activity. Let us then renounce sin, especially all deliberate venial sin and daily repent of it, choosing instead to live in Christ. Let us live out this daily choice in our work and in every aspect of life in which the providence of God has placed us.

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I wish with all my heart that God, in his mercy, in spite of your sins (may you never offend Jesus again!), may make you constantly live that blessed life which is to love his Will.

Despite his best efforts to live in prayer and solitude, today’s saint found it difficult to achieve his deepest desire. People were naturally drawn to Hilarion as a source of spiritual wisdom and peace. He had reached such fame by the time of his death that his body had to be secretly removed so that a shrine would not be built in his honour. Instead, he was buried in his home village. St. Hilarion the Great, as he is sometimes called, was born in Palestine. After his conversion to Christianity he spent some time with St. Anthony of Egypt, another holy man drawn to solitude. Hilarion lived a life of hardship and simplicity in the desert, where he also experienced spiritual dryness that included temptations to despair. At the same time, miracles were attributed to him. As his fame grew, a small group of disciples wanted to follow Hilarion. He began a series of journeys to find a place where he could live away from the world. He finally settled on Cyprus, where he died in 371 at about age 80. Hilarion is celebrated as the founder of monasticism in Palestine. Much of his fame flows from the biography of him written by St. Jerome. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Jesus said to the crowd: When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, 'It's going to rain,' and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, 'It's going to be hot,' and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right? As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way, or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Luke 12:54-59)

Recognizing the time The fact of profound divergence in opinion among men is a fascinating and intriguing phenomenon. Man knows reality instinctively — he has an instinctive knowledge of what is objective to himself, and knows it precisely as being an objective reality. Human knowledge is a wondrous fact, and it surpasses in a critical sense the awareness possessed by the animal. The animal is aware of things, and this awareness is not merely an “impression” experienced by it. You strike a surface and an impression is left upon that surface. Of course, awareness does include an impression being left upon the conscious subject — there is, for instance, an impression on the retina of the eye, and an impression made upon certain brain cells because of this. The term “impression,” though, does not adequately describe “awareness,” for an impression can be made on something with no power of awareness. Awareness involves a form of conscious embrace of what is outside the subject. The animal, in its own way, instinctively apprehends or embraces in awareness what is outside of it, but it is not aware of it precisely as an objective existent. In fact, it is not aware of anything, including itself, as endowed with objective reality or existence. But man is instinctively aware of things, including his own self, precisely as objective realities — as existents. We could say that this is the first thing about the world that man is instinctively aware of, namely its very reality. He struggles to know more and more of the nature of things, but the recognition of their reality is instinctive to him. The animal never attains this. I do not mean here to be discussing the epistemology of human beings. I merely wish to introduce the amazing fact of man’s power to know objective reality instinctively, and gradually with talent and industry to know also a good deal of its nature. Now, to return to the original observation, the fact is that human thought is marked by profound divergences in opinion among men. We all commonly know reality, but our views of it are profoundly at variance. An observer of the human race might find this deeply curious. Putting it differently, it is striking how great the scale of error and misjudgment marks the life of man.

Truth and error! Man’s entire existence and his flourishing depend on his awareness, possession, acceptance and embrace of the truth of things. He is made to find happiness by living in the truth. He is dimly aware of this — and it is confirmed by the experience of life. But so very often he chooses the path of error and rejects the truth. All too often he wants what is wrong, and so very often he rebels against the truth. There is something askew at the heart of his mind, or more precisely at the heart of his will — for it is his will which is seen to be shaping the preferences and judgments of his mind. This disorder in what he wants affects his religious understanding. All of this brings us to the question posed by our Lord in our Gospel passage today: “Jesus said to the crowd: When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, 'It's going to rain,' and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, 'It's going to be hot,' and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time?” (Luke 12:54-59). We can know the drift of things to come when we assess the weather: we can see it is going to rain. We can too, by experience and careful observation, predict that we are heading for hot weather. Our powers of knowing and judging are good in areas of physical fact because this does not bear greatly on our moral Self. But when it comes to matters moral and spiritual, what is especially decisive is our will. Our Lord is pointing to the inner choice of good or evil, to the readiness or unwillingness to obey God and his holy will. As St John writes in the Prologue of his Gospel, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him” (John 1: 10-11). As St Luke writes when describing the intervention of holy Simeon: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the thoughts of many will be revealed” (Luke 2: 34-35). The inner thoughts of man are revealed when he encounters Jesus Christ. He is shown to be unwilling and therefore unable to “interpret this present time,” the time of Jesus Christ.

Let us ask God for his grace so to dispose our inner selves, the inner man of each of us, that we shall be able to “interpret this present time” when Jesus Christ comes to us in the life and witness of his body the Church. Let us resolve to recognize him as the Lord of all bringing to us the words of life, words that set us on the path to sanctity, and the grace to live in him. We need to be created anew, and this is the blessing, the good news of God’s wondrous grace. By baptism we have become new creatures, and the promise of his grace enables us to remain in Christ and attain the perfection to which God has called us.

“This is what makes me a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body.” If we are ever to get anywhere in the spiritual life we shall have to understand what we are up against. Our Lord on one occasion told the parable of the king going out to fight against another king. He first sat down to consider his own forces and to compare them with those of the other king. We have to gain a good understanding of what we are up against, and consider what are our truest and best weapons. Our situation is that there is — and the person intent on doing good needs to realize this — a war going on within him. In our first reading today St Paul describes it experientially: “In my inmost self I dearly love God’s Law, but I can see that my body follows a different law that battles against the law which my reason dictates” (Romans 7: 18-25a). His conscience dictates one thing, and however much he would love to observe that dictate, he is faced with a force within him that presses him towards “evil.” Indeed it “makes” him “a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body.” So we are prisoners of sin, a condition handed on to us as a result of the victory of sin in our first parents. Our condition is a fallen and “wretched” one. This must be clearly recognised. The remedy must also be clearly recognised, and it is at hand. It is the person of Jesus Christ who by his grace rescues us from a condition that will bring us death. We then must constantly take the means that will bring us Christ and his grace. These means are his word and his Sacraments brought to us by his body the Church.

By the grace of Christ we can combat and overcome the law of sin that battles within us. By this grace we can live the law of God that, to use St Paul’s words, we “dearly love.” Let us then live this great message of God’s grace, this Good News, and bring it with joy and conviction to others.

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In God’s service there are no unimportant posts: all are of great importance. The importance of the post depends on the spiritual level reached by the person filling it.

Peter was a contemporary of well-known 16th-century Spanish saints, including Ignatius of Loyola and John of the Cross. He served as confessor to St. Teresa of Avila. Church reform was a major issue in Peter’s day, and he directed most of his energies toward that S tPeter Of Alacantara

end. His death came one year before the Council of Trent ended. Born into a noble family (his father was the governor of Alcantara in Spain), Peter studied law at Salamanca University and, at 16, joined the so-called Observant Franciscans (also known as the discalced, or barefoot, friars). While he practised many penances, he also demonstrated abilities which were soon recognized. He was named the superior of a new house even before his ordination as a priest; at the age of 39, he was elected provincial; he was a very successful preacher. Still, he was not above washing dishes and cutting wood for the friars. He did not seek attention; indeed, he preferred solitude. Peter’s penitential side was evident when it came to food and clothing. It is said that he slept only 90 minutes each night. While others talked about Church reform, Peter’s reform began with himself. His patience was so great that a proverb arose: "To bear such an insult one must have the patience of Peter of Alcantara." In 1554, Peter, having received permission, formed a group of Franciscans who followed the Rule of St. Francis with even greater rigor. These friars were known as Alcantarines. Some of the Spanish friars who came to North and South America in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were members of this group. At the end of the 19th century, the Alcantarines were joined with other Observant friars to form the Order of Friars Minor. As spiritual director to St. Teresa, Peter encouraged her in promoting the Carmelite reform. His preaching brought many people to religious life, especially to the Secular Franciscan Order, the friars and the Poor Clares. He was canonized in 1669.

“I do not praise poverty for poverty's sake; I praise only that poverty which we patiently endure for the love of our crucified Redeemer and I consider this far more desirable than the poverty we undertake for the sake of poverty itself; for if I thought or believed otherwise, I would not seem to be firmly grounded in faith" (Letter of Peter to Teresa of Avila). (AmericanCatholic.org)

Now there were some present on that very occasion who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them— do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Then he told this parable: A man had a fig-tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig-tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?' 'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig round it and fertilise it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.' (Luke 13: 1-9)

Suffering The very best of men have had an enormous problem with the fact of evil and suffering. It is not just a complaint by people who would have been atheists anyway. Famously, Blessed John Henry Newman declared in his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) that were it not for the unassailable conviction of the existence of God coming to him from the testimony of his conscience, he would have been an atheist of any one of a number of varieties. Fr. Ted Tyler

The problem, he said, was the fact of evil and suffering. In May, 2011 there was a debate in Australia between Peter Singer, the Australian Harvard professor of Philosophy, and Oxford’s John Lennox. Years ago I saw a brief interview with Singer and he had said that if God had existed he would have done a better job of the world. This time it was the same. Singer's big question was about God's apparent unconcern for the suffering, to which Lennox graciously replied that he didn't have a neat answer, but rather than being distant from human suffering, God entered into it on the cross. This discussion is endless, and has been going on for ages, and will continue to do so. I would suggest that the theist ought assume the sincerity of the atheist or agnostic when he argues from the point of evil and suffering, and that the atheist ought assume that there might be a far larger answer to the matter than he has ever dreamed of. Let the atheist read the Book of Job, especially the last chapters. The best approach, I believe, is not to look to philosophers for the last word, but to those whom history counts to have been ineffably close to God and who themselves have suffered enormously. Who can compare in this respect to Jesus Christ? Of course, when we refer to Jesus Christ, we do so considering him as part of, and as the summit of, a history of God’s revelation to his people. That is to say, granted the conundrum of the problem of evil, let us look around for light on the problem from God himself, as mediated to us through the prophets, and in particular through the One who surpassed them all, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God made man. Let us, then, paint a few broad strokes. The first thing to be said is that Evil and Suffering, as we now know it and as leading to death, was not the lot of man at the beginning. God placed man in a Garden, and toil, suffering and death came to him only after he had separated from God through sin.

Let us pass over the presentation of sin, suffering and death in the Old Testament, and recall St Paul’s brief words summing up the matter. “Just as through one man sin entered the world and with sin death, so death has come to all men inasmuch as all sinned” (Romans 5:12). In a nutshell, death and all that leads to death has sin as its ultimate source. We cannot see of ourselves how this is so, but it has been revealed to us. It is obvious that this was accepted by the chosen people of God, for the questions put by people to our Lord imply it. On one occasion, recorded by John in his Gospel, our Lord was walking along and he saw a man who had been blind from birth. One wonders what the modern abortion campaigner would have thought of that blind man’s quality of life. Our Lord’s disciples asked him, “was it his sin or that of his parents that caused him to be born blind?” The intimate connection between sin, suffering and evil was taken for granted by the chosen people of God, so much so that it was assumed that if a person was suffering, then his own sin, or that of his parents, must have been the cause of it. Not so, the Teacher of mankind replied — sin was its cause, but not his own sin, nor that of his parents. Indeed, God allowed it so that his works would be shown in him: “it was no sin either of this man or of his parents. Rather it was to let God’s work show forth in him” (John 9:1-3). All of this brings us to our Gospel today (Luke 13: 1-9) , in which our Lord introduces further aspects of the problem of evil. Suffering and evil also, he says, constitute a call to repentance. “Now there were some present on that very occasion who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” If we see great suffering, this should lead us to repent and devote ourselves more generously to the work of God — which especially involves helping those who suffer. Especially, when we ourselves suffer, we ought turn to God as our truest consolation.

The greatest answer to suffering was not a merely intellectual answer. That answer was the embrace of suffering and death by Jesus Christ as the principal means of taking away the sin of the world. By his death, Christ destroyed our death. Because of his sacrifice on Calvary, heaven was opened to us, and there lies before mankind a wondrous prospect of glory. How tragic were this to be lost! There is now not only suffering and death ahead of man, but the hope of endless glory. Let our Lord’s words on suffering, tragedy and death call us to that repentance which will lead us to life, life here and above all life hereafter.

“Your interests are ... in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you.” As we look out on the world of wars, natural disasters and strife of all kinds, we can think that there is not much to be consoled about. Cardinal Newman was especially struck (in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua) with the amount of evil and suffering in the world. Fr. Ted Tyler

This is not only the case with the objective world, but it is also the case with the inner world of each man’s heart and mind. There is so much sin of which we are conscious — sin mixed up with the good, the good seed mixed up with the bad. But there is a great fact which should change our entire perspective. It is that “the Spirit of God has made his home in you,” as St Paul tells us in today’s first reading from Romans. Let us make the doctrine of the divine indwelling a cornerstone of our life. God dwells within the baptised person who is in the state of grace — God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit has made his home with us, we belong to Christ. Christ is in us, and we are in Christ. Now, the great characteristic of the Spirit of God that Scripture constantly brings to our notice is his power. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that God the Son became man. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus offered himself up as a victim to his heavenly Father. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that God “raised Jesus from the dead”. If the Holy Spirit has made his home with us, then as St Paul tells us in today’s passage, God “will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you.”

This life is life eternal, a share in God’s life, it is a share in the holiness of God sanctifying us. By the power of the Holy Spirit God will sanctify us. Let us then live constantly in the company of our divine Guest, the Holy Spirit, asking him to make us holy as befits the children of God.

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Aren’t you glad to have the sure confidence that God is interested in even the tiniest details of his creatures?

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 105 (104): 3-4 Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice; turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face.

Collect Almighty ever-living God, increase our faith, hope and charity, and make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise. 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.

It has been said the Christian saints are the world’s greatest optimists. Not blind to the existence and consequences of evil, they base their confidence on the power of Christ’s redemption. The power of conversion through Christ extends not only to sinful people but also to calamitous events. Imagine being born in the fourteenth century. St John Of Capistrano

One-third of the population and nearly 40 percent of the clergy were wiped out by the bubonic plague. The Western Schism split the Church with two or three claimants to the Holy See at one time. England and France were at war. The city-states of Italy were constantly in conflict. No wonder that gloom dominated the spirit of the culture and the times. John Capistrano was born in 1386. His education was thorough. His talents and success were great. When he was 26 he was made governor of Perugia. Imprisoned after a battle against the Malatestas, he resolved to change his way of life completely. At the age of 30 he entered the Franciscan novitiate and was ordained a priest four years later. His preaching attracted great throngs at a time of religious apathy and confusion. He and 12 Franciscan brethren were received in the countries of central Europe as angels of God. They were instrumental in reviving a dying faith and devotion. The Franciscan Order itself was in turmoil over the interpretation and observance of the Rule of St. Francis. Through John’s tireless efforts and his expertise in law, the heretical Fraticelli were suppressed and the "Spirituals" were freed from interference in their stricter observance. He helped bring about a reunion with the Greek and Armenian Churches, unfortunately only a brief arrangement. When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, he was commissioned to preach a crusade for the defence of Europe. Gaining little response in Bavaria and Austria, he decided to concentrate his efforts in Hungary. He led the army to Belgrade. Under the great General John Junyadi, they gained an overwhelming victory, and the siege of Belgrade was lifted. Worn out by his superhuman efforts, Capistrano was an easy prey to the infection bred by the refuse of battle. He died October 23, 1456.

John Hofer, a biographer of John Capistrano, recalls a Brussels organization named after the saint. Seeking to solve life problems in a fully Christian spirit, its motto was: "Initiative, Organization, Activity." These three words characterized John's life. He was not one to sit around, ever. His deep Christian optimism drove him to battle problems at all levels with the confidence engendered by a deep faith in Christ. On the saint's tomb in the Austrian town of Villach, the governor had this message inscribed: "This tomb holds John, by birth of Capistrano, a man worthy of all praise, defender and promoter of the faith, guardian of the Church, zealous protector of his Order, an ornament to all the world, lover of truth and religious justice, mirror of life, surest guide in doctrine; praised by countless tongues, he reigns blessed in heaven." That is a fitting epitaph for a real and successful optimist. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Exodus 22: 20‑26; Psalm 17; 1 Thessalonians 1: 5‑10; Matthew 22: 34‑40

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22: 34‑40)

Our Mission In one of his books, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stressed how important it is that each person learn how to live. He implied that it is an art, and that the development of this art does not come automatically and naturally. Let this general observation help us reflect on the all-important business of living, which some people reduce to the gaining of material wealth and possessions. Others understand it in terms of “attaining happiness.” That is to say, if one passes one’s years in contentment (say, in a happy marriage, free of personal tragedies, with economic sufficiency and respectable attainments to one’s credit), then one is deemed to have lived well. Others look beyond acquisitions or contentment to achievements in work. One has lived well if one has achieved a good deal, perhaps a great deal. For instance, one might have written a series of successful novels (such as the Harry Potter series). One might have entered politics and gained a ministerial position, and in that position introduced significant policies and legislation that had to do with the improvement of the environment. These notions of living well and of success in life can have their origins in personal reflection, personal inclination and temperament, or in the influence of significant models and friendships. But the fact is that one can be very mistaken as to “how to live.” If man has a definite nature, then how one is to live cannot be simply a matter of choice, meaning by this, arbitrary choice. We need to find out how to live, as something objective. Throughout history, people have looked to “masters” in the business of living — people filled with wisdom and not merely possessed of the capacity to attain chosen goals. The question, then, is that which was posed by the Ethiopian when Philip came to him asking if he understood what he was reading. “How can I,” he replied, “unless some one guides me?” (Acts 8:31). If we are to live well, we need a master, a guide. This is especially so, if we have an objective calling which transcends this life. If life has its ultimate term beyond this brief span of years, if our destiny takes us to something definitive beyond this life, then we need a great master indeed.

Mankind is so singularly blessed, for it has been granted such a Master, one beyond all possible expectation. The Creator and Lord of the world has revealed himself and has vouchsafed to us a divine teaching telling us how to live. This Revelation was granted to a people over many centuries and was recorded in its tradition and its inspired Scriptures. In all of this, a Messiah was promised who, as the woman of Samaria at Jacob’s Well said, “when he comes, he will show us everything” (John 4:25). The promised Messiah would show and teach man everything about how to live. God promised to send us a Master and Guide who would be all we need for wisdom — his anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ. Our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, “I who speak to you am he” (John 4: 26). No other person or prophet in the Canon of the Scriptures claimed to be this promised One, only Jesus of Nazareth. I am the only way to the Father, he said — “no one comes to the Father except through me.” “The Father and I are one,” he said. “He who sees me, sees the Father.” On the holy Mountain, when Jesus was transfigured in glory before his three disciples and conversed with two of the greatest figures of the Old Testament, the voice of the Father was heard: “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!” (Luke 9: 35). He is the Master to whom we must all listen. He tells mankind how to live. What then is his teaching? He commands us to love. That is the secret of life, and is the key to living. This is the art of arts, provided we understand that Jesus himself is the model of what it means to love. In our Gospel today, our Lord is asked what is the supreme commandment of God, the greatest commandment of the Law. “Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22: 34-40). There we have what it is to live: we are to love God with all our strength, and our neighbour as ourself. Now, there is a corollary to this — an important application, and one which we especially think of on Mission Sunday.

The application is that we ought not only strive to love God above all things in our own private life, doing whatever he has commanded us to do. We ought, for love of neighbour, assist others in coming to know of God’s Revelation, which more than anything else means coming to know and love Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world. He is the Master and Guide of all mankind, and the giver of eternal life and divine grace to all. He is our Redeemer, and it is imperative that the world come to know him. This is the greatest service we can offer the world — to help all to know Christ Jesus. This is the supreme mission of the Church and of the Church’s members. Let us take up this mission in our everyday life, and support the mission of the Church in those areas where Christ has not been heard and received.

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Aren’t you glad to have the sure confidence that God is interested in even the tiniest details of his creatures?

Show him again that you really want to be his. “Jesus, help me. Make me really yours; may I burn and be consumed, by dint of little things that no one notices.”

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 105 (104): 3-4 Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice; turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face.

The "spiritual father of Cuba" was a missionary, religious founder, social reformer, queen’s chaplain, writer and publisher, archbishop and refugee. He was a Spaniard whose work took him to the Canary Islands, Cuba, Madrid, Paris and to the First Vatican Council. In his spare time as weaver and designer in the textile mills of Barcelona, he learned Latin and printing: the future priest and publisher was preparing. Ordained at 28, he was prevented by ill health from entering religious S tAnthony Mary Claret

life as a Carthusian or as a Jesuit, but went on to become one of Spain’s most popular preachers. He spent 10 years giving popular missions and retreats, always placing great emphasis on the Eucharist and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Her rosary, it was said, was never out of his hand. At 42, beginning with five young priests, he founded a religious institute of missionaries, known today as the Claretians. He was appointed to head the much-neglected archdiocese of Santiago in Cuba. He began its reform by almost ceaseless preaching and hearing of confessions, and suffered bitter opposition mainly for stamping out concubinage and giving instruction to black slaves. A hired assassin (whose release from prison Anthony had obtained) slashed open his face and wrist. Anthony succeeded in getting the would-be assassin’s death sentence commuted to a prison term. His solution for the misery of Cubans was family-owned farms producing a variety of foods for the family’s own needs and for the market. This invited the enmity of the vested interests who wanted everyone to work on a single cash crop — sugar. Besides all his religious writings are two books he wrote in Cuba: Reflections on Agriculture and Country Delights. He was called back to Spain for a job he did not relish — being chaplain for the queen. He went on three conditions: He would reside away from the palace, he would come only to hear the queen’s confession and instruct the children and he would be exempt from court functions. In the revolution of 1868, he fled with the queen’s party to Paris, where he preached to the Spanish colony. All his life Anthony was interested in the Catholic press. He founded the Religious Publishing House, a major Catholic publishing venture in Spain, and wrote or published 200 books and pamphlets. At Vatican I, where he was a staunch defender of the doctrine of infallibility, he won the admiration of his fellow bishops. Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore remarked of him, "There goes a true saint." He died in exile near the border of Spain at the age of 63.

Jesus foretold that those who are truly his representatives would suffer the same persecution as he did. Besides 14 attempts on his life, Anthony had to undergo such a barrage of the ugliest slander that the very name Claret became a byword for humiliation and misfortune. The powers of evil do not easily give up their prey. No one needs to go looking for persecution. All we need to do is be sure we suffer because of our genuine faith in Christ, not for our own whims and imprudences.

Queen Isabella II once said to Anthony, "No one tells me things as clearly and frankly as you do." Later she told her chaplain, "Everybody is always asking me for favours, but you never do. Isn't there something you would like for yourself?" He replied, "Yes, that you let me resign." The queen made no more offers. (AmericanCatholic.org)

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, Woman, you are set free from your infirmity. Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath. The Lord answered him, You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her? When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing. (Luke 13: 10-17)

Christ and Satan There is an interesting and significant detail which features prominently in this Gospel event. Luke tells us that “On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years.” The Greek states that she had “a spirit of illness” — meaning, “a spirit which caused infirmity” for eighteen years. So she was not simply crippled by a physical deterioration that prevented her from maintaining a normal erect position. Luke’s sentence suggests that the principal agent was not mere physical illness but demonic. Fr. Ted Tyler

A demon had somehow gained access to her interior physical processes and was able to wreck her bodily wellbeing. There is not the slightest suggestion that she had been in any way at fault, opening the door, as it were, to some kind of entry by the underworld. The case was very different with Judas Iscariot — through various spiritual infidelities and a gradual loss of faith he had opened the door to Satan, who finally “entered” him — as we read in John’s account of the Last Supper (John 14:27). This woman’s condition instantly evoked Christ’s powerful compassion, and certainly not his condemnation. The point to notice here, though, is the very fact of this demonic influence on the physical condition of the woman. It surely suggests that there is more behind the scene of the world’s drama than meets the eye. For reasons known only to God, Satan is allowed a certain sway over events, including physical events. It is all part of the horrible heritage of the Original Sin of our First Parents. Communion with God was sundered by their prideful rebellion, and the gates were opened to influences other than God. This woman of our Gospel scene is an instance of this — and the point is amply confirmed by our Lord himself. Having healed the woman at a touch, our Lord was challenged by the synagogue official who demanded that people not present themselves for healing on the Sabbath. In his rebuttal, our Lord referred to “this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years”. If an ox or a donkey can be untied and led to water on the Sabbath, he said, how much more ought this woman be released from her satanic bonds and given relief on the Sabbath!

The point here is that the principal agent in her affliction was a demon, and behind this “spirit of illness” or “spirit causing infirmity,” there was Satan himself (Luke 13:16). We are reminded of our Lord’s reference to both the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? our Lord asked his adversaries (Luke 11:18). This implies that there is a certain strategic unity among the demons, under the hegemony of Satan. There is a satanic kingdom and it is hatefully opposed to the Kingdom of God, led by Jesus Christ. At the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry, as he was preparing himself in the wilderness following the descent of the Holy Spirit on him at his Baptism, Satan approached him. Satan, under the guise of the Serpent, had approached the Woman in the Garden at the beginning, and had succeeded in bringing her and the Man to their Fall. Here was a New Man, another Adam. So he approached — no ordinary demon, but Satan himself. Let us notice what he says, for it reveals to us something of a sway that Satan is granted in the course of the physical world. We read that “the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours’” (Luke 4: 5-8). Christ did not formally agree that it had been delivered to him, but nor did he dispute it. To a point the statement was true. To a degree, the authority and the glory of the kingdoms of the world were in Satan’s hands. We have in this text one instance of Satan attempting to make a tremendous and far-reaching deal with a specific individual, and promising to hand over to him power over the world, under certain conditions. The point here, though, is that Satan is shown to have a certain sway over the world, its physical reality as well as its history. It is a broader canvass against which we can place our incident today of the woman whom Satan had held bound for eighteen years. Modern secular man who denies the supernatural and allows only for what is empirically verifiable, is missing a powerful factor in empirical experience itself.

Our Gospel scene today shows us that whatever of the evil influences on the world that transcend sight and sound, man has an all-powerful and all-holy Saviour. He is the Saviour of the world, and against him Satan is as nothing. At a word he released the woman from the bonds that Satan had imposed on her (Luke 13: 10-17). What we must do is take our stand with him, live in union with him, sharing his divine life by means of the gift of grace, and resolve to keep his commandments for love of him. If we do this, all will be well, and life will be ours.

“The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God.” On one occasion when he was leading the Oxford Movement, John Henry Newman had a visit from like-minded Cambridge men. They told him about certain others at Cambridge, and Newman said of them, “What they lack is fear.” He meant that if they were ever to take God seriously, they would have to start with fearing him. Fr. Ted Tyler

Malcolm Muggeridge once said that the superstitious primitives who were fearful of various invisible powers were closer to the reality of things than the secular-minded modern man. Both Newman and Muggeridge were pointing out that the fear and superstition characteristic of a certain level of religiosity is in advance of the secular and liberal mindset that is carefree in respect to God. The awesome reality of God is scarcely apprehended by such a person. Nature at its best will fear God because at its best it will have an inkling of his awesome holiness and power. If there is little or no fear of offending God, it is an indication that God is not taken seriously. We are by nature God’s dependent and sinful creatures. This having been said, the Christian has received the gift of the Holy Spirit which makes him a child of God and not merely a (guilty) servant or slave. As St Paul tells us, the “Spirit you have received is not the spirit of slaves bringing fear into your lives again; it is the Spirit of sons, and it makes us cry out “Abba, Father!” We are children of God with a marvellous prospect ahead of us. We are “heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ, sharing his sufferings so as to share his glory” (Romans 8: 12-17).

Let us take God very seriously. The most natural thing in the world is to fear the great God. That being said, let us who are baptised understand that by God’s gift we are his children, not his slaves.

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The Holy Rosary: the joys, the sorrows, and the glories of the life of Our Lady weave a crown of praises, repeated ceaselessly by the Angels and the Saints in Heaven — and by those who love our Mother here on earth. Practise this holy devotion every day, and spread it.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 105 (104): 3-4 Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice; turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face.

God’s plan in a person’s life often takes unexpected turns which become life-giving through cooperation with God’s grace. Born in Guarantingueta near São Paulo (Brazil), Antônio attended the Jesuit seminary in Belem but later decided to become a Franciscan friar. Invested in 1760, he made final profession the following year and was ordained in 1762. In São Paulo, he served as preacher, confessor and porter. Within a few years he was appointed confessor to the Recollects of St. Teresa, a group of nuns in that city. He and Sister Helena Maria of the Holy Spirit founded a new community of sisters under the patronage of Our Lady of the Conception of Divine Providence. Sister Helena Maria’s premature death the next year left Father Antônio responsible for the new congregation, especially for building a convent and church adequate for their growing numbers. He served as novice master for the friars in Macacu and as guardian of St. Francis Friary in São Paulo. He founded St. Clare Friary in Sorocaba. With the permission of his provincial and the bishop, he spent his last days at the "Recolhimento de Nossa Senhora da Luz," the convent of the sisters’ congregation he had helped establish. He was beatified in Rome on October 25, 1998.

During the beatification homily, Pope John Paul II quoted from the Second Letter to Timothy (4:17), "The Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the word fully," and then said that Antônio "fulfilled his religious consecration by dedicating himself with love and devotion to the afflicted, the suffering and the slaves of his era in Brazil." The pope continued, "His authentically Franciscan faith, evangelically lived and apostolically spent in serving his neighbour, will be an encouragement to imitate this ‘man of peace and charity.’" (AmericanCatholic.org)

Jesus asked, What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches. Again he asked, What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough. (Luke 13:18-21)

Divine grace She is now in her ninety-first year, and very frail. All her life she has been a little frail, but paradoxically, tough as well. Years ago she underwent a stroke, but survived and carried on. She never had much formal schooling — a little more than primary, and she was never much of a reader in terms of recreation and culture. Her reading was, in the main, religious. She could be surprising to those who were aware of the spiritual classics. For instance, for years she read repeatedly The Cloud of Unknowing which she accidentally stumbled across. She skipped the Introduction which discussed the history and significance of The Cloud, and simply read the text. She liked it, and read it repeatedly — not as an academic, but as a simple, relatively uneducated religious reader. She understood it. She was naturally intelligent and capable, but the notable thing about her was her unflagging Catholic Faith. Her faith never dimmed but grew, and with it, religious understanding. She had a sixth sense as to what was right and unswervingly accepted Catholic teaching. If the Pope declared something in his religious teaching, she accepted it as from the Lord. She loved the Pope as the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. Her life revolved around the Eucharist, and in particular daily Mass. She loved the saints, especially Mary the mother of Jesus. She regularly frequented the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and had her daily round of prayers, with pride of place given to the Rosary. She had a very sensitive conscience, and would never do anything deliberately that was obviously wrong. She strove to keep God’s commandments as her love. This Catholic spirit which was ever growing all her life was not the fruit simply of a personal bent or of decisions in the way that, say, one might actively develop a particular interest during life. There was something more than this guiding her on and carrying her forward in her love for God. Now in her ninety-first year she loves Jesus Christ, the angels and saints, the Church — Christ’s creation, and the members of her family for whom she is always praying. What I am saying is that this good lady is a work of God’s grace. Grace is behind it.

We see something of this in history. Ireland was evangelized by Patrick, though there was something of a Christian presence there prior to him. It is probable that the knowledge of Christianity that existed in Ireland before the arrival of Palladius and Patrick (in 431 and 432, respectively) came from Britain, with which the Irish then kept up constant intercourse, and where there were large numbers of Christians from a very early time. However, the great body of the Irish were pagans when St. Patrick arrived in 432; and to him belongs the glory of converting them. Patrick boldly confronted the druids at Tara and banned their rituals. He converted many influential chieftains and princes, baptizing them in the holy wells. It is widely believed that he died on March 17, 493. Just as Patrick himself was the work of grace — with which he generously co-operated during his strenuous life — so was the extraordinary Catholic history of Ireland. The greatest fruit of grace is enduring faith amid difficulties. Poland could be cited, as well as other countries. The history of these countries also shows the hazards that can attack and undermine the life of grace, and how the faith can be radically weakened or lost. The general point here, though, is that we have a higher principle of life on which we can depend and from which we can draw in our desire to live well and even heroically. The key to the really good life is the knowledge and love of a particular Person, Jesus Christ the divine Redeemer of man. Each person, each society and nation, and all of humanity are called to accept Jesus Christ as Lord, and to find life in his name. This is what it is to enter God’s kingdom. Therein lies the path to life in abundance, which is none other than living in the state of grace. In our Gospel our Lord stresses this power of grace to produce spiritual growth: “It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches.” Or again, “It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough” (Luke 13: 18-21). Grace is the principle of the religious life that God himself has established, built on and elevating man’s natural religious sense.

Let us look to divine grace, and depend on it. It is the gift of God. In his words to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well, Christ said, “if you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10). That lady I mentioned earlier, now nearing her end, has drunk from that living water all her life. She knows the gift of God and who it is who offers it. There have been nations who have come to know the gift of God, and whose acceptance of the gift has produced saints and sanctity to an impressive degree. Let us prize the grace of God and resolve to live by it.

“We must hope to be saved since we are not saved yet- it is something we must wait for with patience.” A person who has no patience is limited in what he will be able to attain. The attainment of goals involves a steady and persevering effort amid inevitable difficulties. Connected with patience is hope. Despite what may appear to be a lack of progress, the man of patience continues to hope that he will attain his chosen goal. This is especially so in the Christian life, the goal of which is the perfect love of God. We are burdened with numerous and profoundly entrenched faults that require both patience and hope in the work of overcoming them. The service of others to which God calls us in life inevitably involves difficulties and many disappointments. Our work for others and our progress in sanctity require patience and hope day by day over the years of our life. St Paul refers to patience and hope in our first reading today (Romans 8: 18-25). We “must be content to hope that we shall be saved”, he says, for we do not yet see it. “It is something we must wait for in patience.” Our Lord describes the kingdom of God, God’s rule in us, as being like the growth of a mustard seed into a tree, and as like the yeast that gradually leavens the flour (Luke 13: 18-21). It requires hope and patience — a glorious hope, for as St Paul writes, "what we suffer in this life can never be compared to the glory, as yet unrevealed, which is waiting for us" (Rom 8:18).

What then is the secret? At least part of the secret is always to be starting again. Every day let us put the past with its burdensome memories behind us, and begin again with our sights on the final goal. That goal we shall attain by serving God totally in the present. So then, now I begin!

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Baptism makes us fideles, faithful. This is a word that was used — like sancti, the saints — by the first followers of Jesus to refer to one another. These words are still used today: we speak of the faithful of the Church. Think about this.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 105 (104): 3-4 Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice; turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face.

Contardo Ferrini was the son of a teacher who went on to become a learned man himself, one acquainted with some dozen languages. Today he is known as the patron of universities. Born in Milan, he received a doctorate in law in Italy and then earned a scholarship that enabled him to study Roman-Byzantine law in Berlin. As a renowned legal expert, he taught in various schools of higher education until he joined the faculty of the University of Pavia, where he was considered an outstanding authority on Roman law. Contardo was learned about the faith he lived and loved. "Our life," he said, "must reach out toward the Infinite, and from that source we must draw whatever we can expect of merit and dignity." As a scholar he studied the ancient biblical languages and read the Scriptures in them. His speeches and papers show his understanding of the relationship of faith and science. He attended daily Mass and became a lay Franciscan, faithfully observing the Third Order rule of life. He also served through membership in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. His death in 1902 at the age of 43 occasioned letters from his fellow professors that praised him as a saint; the people of Suna where he lived insisted that he be declared a saint. Pope Pius XII beatified Contardo in 1947.

Thanks to people like Contardo, our Church long ago laid to rest the idea that science and faith are incompatible. We thank God for the many ways science has made our lives better. All that remains to us is to help ensure that the rest of the world, especially impoverished nations, gets to enjoy the fruits of scientific advance. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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

Salvation One of the great issues of the beginning of the twenty-first century is the state of the environment and the various threats to its wellbeing. This is controverted, with some maintaining that the human factor in its deterioration is vastly overplayed. Others insist that the scientific evidence for this is utterly probative. Be all this as it may, the point here is that the environment is now regarded as an arena of possible disaster. It is an instance of threat and hazard in the life of man. Fr. Ted Tyler

Years back, over-population was seen to be the major threat — and China, for instance, launched into its simplistic and socially disastrous one child per family policy. Threats are everywhere, from the threat of natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, to that of civil wars and revolutions with their movements of refugees and large scale famines. Catastrophes can hit individuals, families, societies, nations. The United States of America, the most powerful country on the globe at the beginning of the twenty-first century, is faced with a mind-boggling financial debt. The life of man is strewn with hazards and there is nothing he can do to be simply rid of them. He is part of an essentially vulnerable and contingent reality which is not only dependent for its very existence on the one and only necessary Being, but which, because of the Original Fall of man, is dislocated from its natural communion with that Being, its Creator. Nothing in man nor in man’s world is inherently secure: its security depends on the sustaining touch of God, the only necessary One. Man must continually work at maintaining his life and security, alive to the threats and hazards ahead. But there is one great threat which the nations of the modern era tend especially to overlook, and that is the grand threat which looms before him in the Afterlife. Yes, he works and strives to preserve his life — but, of course, ultimately his life will be taken from him somehow, and this inevitable event will always be relatively soon. What then? The biggest threat of all is that which no eye can see nor ear hear. It is the threat of what might happen after he dies. How foolish to ignore this threat, while taking seriously the merely temporal ones!

There is surely nothing more pressing than the question of what will happen to us after death. There is a universal sense that the Afterlife will be unending in some way — even though there are those who adopt a position of extinction. They think that with the end of this life there is an end of everything, in terms of the individual. But to say the least, this opinion is most unusual, and even eccentric. It would be a tremendous gamble to live according to it, and to eat, drink and be merry “for tomorrow we die.” The greatest religious Teacher in mankind’s history, Jesus Christ, has taught that following life there is God’s Judgment, and at the end of human history, there will be the final General Judgment of God. He himself will be the Judge. It will come down to Heaven or Hell — one or the other for each person. We are faced with an eternity following death, unending existence in which we shall either be in joy or misery. What it will be will depend on how we have lived in a moral sense — have I striven to be good in God’s sight, or have I cared little for goodness and pursued the path of self-gratification and sin? So it is that the question posed in our Gospel today is of momentous importance: “Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, ‘Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?’” Who will be saved? Will I be saved? Let us notice that our Lord does not answer that question in the way it was phrased. He tells us, rather, what we are to do about it. We must struggle to attain salvation. “He said to them, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' But he will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.'” We must make every effort to enter by the narrow door, which is none other than the doing of God’s will whatever be the difficulty. Further, our Lord insists that nothing can be taken for granted: “there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last” (Luke 13: 22-30).

Life is short, and it is full of hazards. A man in seeming health suddenly is discovered to have terminal cancer, and is gone within eight weeks. Life is short, and eternity is long. The one thing necessary is that we gain life eternal. The question posed to our Lord by that good young man is relevant to every person of every age: “Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18). Today, the question is: “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” The issue is the same: we must do all we can to get to Heaven, and the greatest service we can do to another, let alone to a whole society, is to help that person be saved. The only name by which all men are saved is that of Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12). He is the one and only Saviour of the world.

“The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness.” Among the sources of the religious instinct in man is surely his sense of personal weakness. Because he senses that he is weak, Fr. Ted Tyler

he looks to the powers above — however he might conceive or imagine them. A person who has little sense of personal weakness may find it difficult to acknowledge the divine. It was by no means uncommon in the ancient world for rulers to claim divine status (as did, say, Alexander the Great) buttressed by their illusion of personal power and lack of a sense of weakness. They forgot that they were weak, and needed God. Now, we have received the Holy Spirit as Christ’s gift. Our Lord said that when we are in situations of oppression and difficulty, that will be the opportunity to bear witness. We need not, he said, be worried about what we shall say because the Spirit of our Father will be speaking within us. He will help us in our weakness. In our first reading today (Romans 8: 26-30) St Paul tells us that “the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words”. So the Holy Spirit will be our support in prayer to God, and will enable us to pray.

In today's Gospel (Luke 13: 22-30) our Lord warns us to "try your best to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed." Let us call on the help of the Holy Spirit far more than we do. Let us recognise in faith his presence within us because of our baptism, and turn to him as our God and our Friend. By the power of the Holy Spirit our Lord saved us from the power of sin, and by his power we are being sanctified. We must remain in his grace. Let us recognise our weakness not only as creatures, but as children of God, and recognising this, let us cast ourselves on the care of the Divine Spirit who is the Love of God.

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God does not let himself be outdone in generosity. Be sure that he grants faithfulness to those who give themselves to him.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 105 (104): 3-4 Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice; turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face.

Dominicans honour one of their own today, Blessed Bartholomew of Vicenza. This was a man who used his skills as a preacher to challenge the heresies of his day. Bartholomew was born in Vicenza around 1200. At 20 he entered the Dominicans. Following his ordination he served in various leadership positions. As a young priest he founded a military order whose purpose was to keep civil peace in towns throughout Italy. In 1248, Bartholomew was appointed a bishop. For most men, such an appointment is an honour and a tribute to their holiness and their demonstrated leadership skills. But for Bartholomew, it was a form of exile that had been urged by an antipapal group that was only too happy to see him leave for Cyprus. Not many years later, however, Bartholomew was transferred back to Vicenza. Despite the antipapal feelings that were still evident, he worked diligently — especially through his preaching — to rebuild his diocese and strengthen the people’s loyalty to Rome. During his years as bishop in Cyprus, Bartholomew befriended King Louis the Ninth of France, who is said to have given the holy bishop a relic of Christ’s Crown of Thorns. Bartholomew died in 1271. He was beatified in 1793. (AmericanCatholic.org

At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you. He replied, Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will attain my end.’ But for today and tomorrow and the next day I must keep going — for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! So be it! Your house will be left to you. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ (Luke 13:31-35)

Christ’s courage We read in the First Book of Kings of how Elijah the prophet of Yahweh confronted the four hundred and fifty prophets of Ba’al on Mount Carmel (18:17-40). He was victorious in the test of a sacrifice and then had them all executed. At that, Jezebel, King Ahab’s pagan wife (16:31), who had patronised the prophets of Ba’al (18:19), sent a messenger to Elijah with the promise that she would arrest and execute him by the morrow for what he had done to them (19:1-2). We read that Elijah was then “afraid, and he arose and went for his life, and came to Beersheba,” going on a day’s journey into the wilderness, full of desolation (19: 3-4). So, at the real threat to his life, Elijah was terrified and fled, and was brought to the brink of a form of despair. That was centuries before Christ, and our scene today shows us the Pharisees coming to Jesus and warning him that Herod wanted to kill him. Whether this was really so, we are not told. Our passage is from the Gospel of St Luke, and in Luke’s account of the Passion, Pilate sends Christ to Herod when he learns that he is a Galilean. We read that “when Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by him” (Luke 23:8). In the event, Herod sent Christ back to Pilate dressed ridiculously as royalty. It does not look as if Herod really was seeking to kill Christ. However, this was the threat that was conveyed to Jesus: “At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” Christ was sovereignly unmoved by the news. He was a man of pre-eminent courage, and he knew what and when his hour would be: “He replied, Go tell that fox, 'I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will attain my end.' But for today and tomorrow and the next day I must keep going — for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!” There are many things which distinguish Jesus Christ as a man and a prophet — prescinding from the divinity of his Person. One of those things was his intrepid courage. Nothing, nothing whatever could deter or shake him from the path of doing the will of the Father and completing his work on earth.

This resolve was not just a matter of sheer grit. It was suffused and brimming over with love. Love was at the heart of his undaunted strength, his resolve and his courage. This we see in the next words of Christ as he refers to the City which was so much the object of God’s love. Jerusalem! Jerusalem was the heart and crown of the Promised Land, the location of the Temple and therefore the special abode here on earth of the Father. Jerusalem was the Holy City, the City of the most remarkable Temple among the nations. It was the House of Christ’s heavenly Father. How Christ loved Jerusalem! “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! So be it!” (Luke 13:31-35). In these words, so full of pathos, we sense the grandeur of Christ’s love and of his resolve to go forward into the lion’s den of his enemies, there to bear witness to his Person and mission. There he would declare before the highest religious representatives of the nation who he was and what he had come to do. He did this because of his love, a courageous love the equal of which had never been seen in Israel. It surpassed Elijah, as all the prophets. There have been many heroic people in human history. Alexander the Great was a man of remarkable exploits. East of Porus’ kingdom, he encountered the Malli clans (in modern day Multan). During a siege, Alexander jumped into the fortified city with only two of his bodyguards and was wounded seriously by a Mallian arrow. His forces, believing their king dead, took the citadel and unleashed their fury on the Malli who had taken refuge within it, perpetrating a massacre, sparing no man, woman or child. Then, due to the efforts of his surgeon, Kritodemos of Kos, Alexander survived the injury. But it was all for personal glory. Christ, on the other hand, with a love without limit, took unto himself the work of atoning for the sins of the whole world. Alexander — how many and how grievous were his sins! Think, then, of the whole world. The Lamb of God was taking away the sin of the world. How great the courage!

The moral stature of Jesus Christ is without compare in the annals of human history, and a significant feature of this was his courage. Nothing could sway him, nothing could make him wilt, however great might be his fear as in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was a real man, with every bit of the human nature that is ours — though his Person was divine. He feared what was to come because of its unparalleled enormity, but this did not shake his resolve. At the heart of this was love, love for his heavenly Father and love for us his brothers and sisters. This spirit of his was the Spirit of God, and he shares this Holy Spirit with those who believe in him. By the power of this divine Spirit we are enabled to become more and more like Jesus Christ.

“Nothing therefore can come between us and the love of Christ” To grow in the Christian spirit we must come to know the love of Christ and to put our faith in it. Very many people do not realize that God loves them, and the result is that God remains distant to them. The philosophical position once in vogue and known as Deism accepted the existence of God, but looked on him as one who, having created and initiated the world, left what he had created to its own momentum, laws and history, and refrained from any further interventions. One suspects that elements of this view constitute the position of various theists even now, and certainly in sectors of the popular mind. There are other systems of thought and religions which greatly emphasise the transcendence of God, while having little sense of his immanence. What is lacking experientially is a personal discovery of God’s love. God has revealed his love for us. If we do not embrace this revelation, it is hard to see how the love of God in a powerful and personal sense will be discovered. Now, it is Jesus who is the fulness of God’s revelation. It is he who reveals the Father’s love. ‘He who sees me, sees the Father,’ he declared. In today’s Gospel (Luke 13: 31-35) our Lord gives expression to his divine and human love for God’s people: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, ...How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you refused!” These words our Lord utters to us as well. He invites us to gather under his protection and to live in his love. Let us actively appreciate our Lord’s words of love as they are repeated by him across the pages of the Gospel. Let us come to him, learn of him, and live in him and in his love. He is our life. As St Paul says in the first reading (Romans 8: 31b-39), “nothing can come between us and the love of Christ.”

All those things that trouble and worry us, all the deprivations we experience, nothing separates us from his love. We can always depend on it. The task, though, is to discover and appreciate it. We do this by meditating on the Person and the words of Jesus as revealed in the Gospel and as transmitted to us by the Church. Let us pray for a profound knowledge of the love of Jesus Christ.

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Don’t be afraid to be demanding on yourself. Many souls do so in their hidden inner life, so that only Jesus may shine out.

I wish you and I would react as that person did who wanted to be very close to God, on the feast of the Holy Family. In those days it was celebrated within the octave of the Epiphany.

“I have had a number of little crosses. There was one yesterday that hurt so much it made me weep. Today it made me think that my Father and Lord, St Joseph, and my Mother, Holy Mary, won’t have left this child of theirs without its Christmas present. The present was the light that made me see my thanklessness to Jesus in my failing to correspond to his grace; and to see how mistaken I was to resist, by my boorish behaviour, the most Holy Will of God, who wants me as his instrument.”

Entrance Antiphon These are the holy men whom the Lord chose in his own perfect love; to them he gave eternal glory.

Collect O God, who by the blessed Apostles have brought us to acknowledge your name, graciously grant, through the intercession of Saints Simon and Jude, that the Church may constantly grow by increase of the peoples who believe in you. 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.

Jude is so named by Luke and Acts. Matthew and Mark call him Thaddeus. He is not mentioned elsewhere in the Gospels, except, of course, where all the apostles are referred to. Scholars hold that he is not the author of the Letter of Jude. Actually, Jude had the same name as Judas Iscariot. Evidently because of the disgrace of that name, it was shortened to "Jude" in English. Simon is mentioned on all four lists of the apostles. On two of them he is called "the Zealot." The Zealots were a Jewish sect that represented an extreme of Jewish nationalism. For them, the messianic promise of the Old Testament meant that the Jews were to be a free and independent nation. God alone was their king, and any payment of taxes to the Romans — the very domination of the Romans — was a blasphemy against God. No doubt some of the Zealots were the spiritual heirs of the Maccabees, carrying on their ideals of religion and independence. But many were the counterparts of modern terrorists. They raided and killed, attacking both foreigners and "collaborating" Jews. They were chiefly responsible for the rebellion against Rome which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

As in the case of all the apostles except for Peter, James and John, we are faced with men who are really unknown, and we are struck by the fact that their holiness is simply taken to be a gift of Christ. He chose some unlikely people: a former Zealot, a former (crooked) tax collector, an impetuous fisherman, two "sons of thunder" and a man named Judas Iscariot. It is a reminder that we cannot receive too often. Holiness does not depend on human merit, culture, personality, effort or achievement. It is entirely God's creation and gift. God needs no Zealots to bring about the kingdom by force. Jude, like all the saints, is the saint of the impossible: only God can create his divine life in human beings. And God wills to do so, for all of us.

"Just as Christ was sent by the Father, so also he sent the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit. This he did so that, by preaching the gospel to every creature (cf. Mark 16:15), they might proclaim that the Son of God, by his death and resurrection, had freed us from the power of Satan (cf. Acts 26:18) and from death, and brought us into the kingdom of his Father" (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy). (AmericanCatholic.org)

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountain to pray, and spent the whole night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. (Luke 6:12-16)

Simon and Jude It is plain from this passage that Christ’s appointment of the Twelve from among his disciples was a very significant step. Their position was of great importance in our Lord’s mission and in what he was soon to establish. They were the foundation of his structure, the Church. Mark (3: 14-15) tells us that Jesus “appointed twelve to be with him and to be sent out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” Fr. Ted Tyler

The other disciples did not, normally, live with Jesus on his mission — but the Twelve did. They were to act in his name on mission and exercise some of his powers. In Matthew (10:1) we read that “he gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.” At this point our Lord was preaching, driving out demons and healing every infirmity — this is what he was empowering them to do. In his account of the appointment of the Twelve in our passage today (Luke 6:12-16), Luke does not describe their office — he presumes it is known. In a later chapter (9: 1-5) he narrates how Jesus “called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal.” This is more or less what our Lord himself was doing at this stage, although he did do more than this. He forgave sins, for instance. He raised the dead. He calmed storms. He fed vast crowds. He spoke with unequalled authority. Granted this, they were, then, his envoys and did what he was doing and thus extended his presence and reach. They were the Church in embryo and in formation, awaiting the coming of the Spirit after Christ’s return to the Father. In fact, the nature of their mission would be made clearer after Christ’s Resurrection. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28: 19-20). In Luke, the risen Christ promises “power from on high” and then they will preach repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem (24:47-49).

But the next thing we notice is that many of the Twelve are known to us little more than by name. Their names appear in the lists of the Twelve, but for many of them, that is the last we hear of them as individuals. Simon and Jude constitute a case in point. Simon is called "Cananaean" and "Zealot," and we can deduce a little from this. Jude, sometimes called Thaddaeus, asks Christ a question at the Last Supper regarding the Lord's manifestation to the apostles rather than to others. There is a Letter of one page in the New Testament by “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (verse 1), which is traditionally attributed to our Jude the Apostle. I suspect that this inspired Letter is rarely read. There are traditions about their histories, but in the main Simon and Jude disappear from the annals of history rather quickly despite their being members of the Twelve. In the Book of Revelation we read how the Author, “in the Spirit” is carried away to a great high mountain and shown “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God ... and the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (21: 10-14). Two of those names were, of course, those of Simon and Jude. They were foundations of the Church, but we scarcely know anything about them. Among many things, this surely reminds us that however important this or that saint may have been in God’s plan and providence, there are greater things still. Christ is the focus of the life of the Christian and of the Church from age to age, whatever good work this or that holy Christian may have done. Simon and Jude also bear witness to the pivotal role of the Church in God’s plan. They were among the Church’s foundations, and they point to the Church, just as the Church points to Christ. We, all of us, by our baptism, become members of the Church and thereby members of Christ — just as by baptism we become members of Christ, and thereby members of the Church. Simon and Jude remind us that the Christian life is not simply a matter of “Christ and me.” Christ is the Head of his body the Church, and we who are in Christ by baptism are thereby members of his Church, as were Simon and Jude. Their relative anonymity casts into greater relief the fact of the Church.

As we think of Simon and Jude, Apostles whom we perhaps do not sufficiently think of and yet whom the Church celebrates every year with a Feast Day, let us think of what they stood for. They stood for Jesus Christ and his Church. They gave their lives for him and for his body the Church. Let us do likewise in all our anonymity and ordinariness of life. For the overwhelming majority of us, life pursues an ordinary and obscure course. We shall never appear again in the annals of history. We shall never have a footnote to our name. Yet our ordinary lives can attain a grandeur, and it will depend on our dedication to Jesus Christ and his Church. Let us take our cue from Simon and Jude. We all have the same Love that was theirs. That Love is Jesus Christ.

“When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; .... called ‘Apostles’." Today is a feast day in the Church’s year, a day of very special solemnity, for it is the feast of two of the Twelve Apostles. Fr. Ted Tyler

Simon and Jude were very important to our Lord. We are told in the Gospel passage of today that “he spent the whole night in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; he called them ‘apostles’.” We are told elsewhere in the Gospel that our Lord sent out seventy-two of his disciples, two by two, on mission. There would have been many other disciples. We are told by St Paul that after our Lord rose from the dead five hundred saw him on one occasion. But of these disciples he chose only twelve to be the foundation of the Church he was establishing. Our two Apostles today lived with him and went on to be part of the very basis of the Church after the Resurrection and Pentecost. Yet despite their great importance in the plan of God we know practically nothing about Simon and Jude. What are we to make of this anonymity which is characteristic of a number of the Twelve? One thing it surely means is that relative anonymity and seeming ordinariness is part and parcel of the plan of God, and the medium within which God does his work.

We are part of this. The task ahead is to make of our ordinary and blessed anonymity something grand in the sight of God. We do so by doing God’s will, which means the work he has set us to do, however humdrum and unnoticed it may be. It is God who will be working in and through our work, provided we do well the work he gave us, and for him.

“From Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:1) Today we celebrate the Apostles Simon and Jude, and in thinking of the apostolic foundation of the Fr. Ted Tyler

Church, we are led to think of the Church itself. It would be an interesting exercise to ask various members of the Church what exactly they think the Catholic Church is. Their notion of the Church will profoundly affect the way they live out their membership of it. If they regard it as an institution wholly dependent on the activities of its leaders, that notion will shape their life in it. In Philippians 1: 1-11 St Paul mentions a fundamental aspect of the life of the Church — its life of communion. The apostles were the foundation of a great communion in Christ. He and Timothy are “servants of Jesus Christ”, and they write to “all the saints in Jesus Christ, together with the presiding elders and deacons.” The Church consists of those — whether the body of “the saints” or ”their presiding elders and deacons” — who are “in Jesus Christ.” It is because of this fact, this being “in Christ,” that there is a great communion that constitutes the life of the Church. The Church is the communion of “the saints.” In the Creed we state that we believe in the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church, the communion of saints. This is because we believe in Jesus Christ whose servants we are, and in whom the entire Church lives.

This communion of life in Christ is the source of a life of apostolic sharing, and it is Christ himself the Church’s members desire to share. That is what St Paul rejoices in with respect to the Philippians: they “have helped to spread the Good News from the day you first heard it right up to the present.” St Paul is full of confidence in them “since you have shared the privileges which have been mine: both my chains and my work defending and establishing the gospel.” That is to say, the Church is a great communion in Christ, and her life is to live in communion, sharing together and with others the blessings, the mission and the trials of her Lord, whose servants her members are.

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When the holy women reached the tomb they found that the stone had been rolled aside. This is what always happens: when we make up our minds to do what we should, the difficulties are easily overcome.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 105 (104): 3-4 Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice; turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face.

Life in second- and third-century Jerusalem couldn’t have been easy, but St. Narcissus managed to live well beyond 100. Some even speculate he lived to 160. Details of his life are sketchy, but there are many reports of his miracles. The miracle for which he is most remembered was turning water into oil for use in the church lamps on Holy Saturday when the deacons had forgotten to provide any. We do know that Narcissus became bishop of Jerusalem in the late second century. He was known for his holiness, but there are hints that many people found him harsh and rigid in his efforts to impose church discipline. One of his many detractors accused Narcissus of a serious crime at one point. Though the charges against him did not hold up, he used the occasion to retire from his role as bishop and live in solitude. His disappearance was so sudden and convincing that many people assumed he had actually died. Several successors were appointed during his years in isolation. Finally, Narcissus reappeared in Jerusalem and was persuaded to resume his duties. By then, he had reached an advanced age, so a younger bishop was brought in to assist him until his death. (AmericanCatholic.org)(AmericanCatholic.org)

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honour at the table, he told them this parable: When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honour, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honoured in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 14:1, 7-11)

Wisdom On the one hand we have before us Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand we have the Pharisee and his class. In a formal sense, Christ was relatively unschooled. That is to say, he had not attended, as a scholar and apprentice, the leading religious teachers of the day — as did, say, Paul of Tarsus who subsequently rose to prominence as a Pharisee. Putting it in contemporary terms, he did not have university qualifications such as a masters or doctorate. Our Lord had not “studied.” Rather, he suddenly appeared as from nowhere, out of an obscure village of a few hundred inhabitants within walking distance of the bustling and cosmopolitan city of Zephoris. The striking phenomenon about him was that he was filled with wisdom, and knew everything. He depended on no-one, and appeared as having full authority to speak and teach in a way that transcended the scholars, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the priests — all parties of influence in the nation. They did not hold a candle to him, as we might say. Nor was it as if he gradually proved himself as one would by an increasing number of academic articles or proven achievements to one’s credit. Jesus Christ suddenly began in a public way as teacher (Rabbi), and more importantly, was rapidly recognized as a great prophet of God. A great light suddenly appeared in the hills and plains of Galilee, going from village and town and farm, speaking of the arrival of God’s rule. As I say, the striking thing about this Man was not only his dazzling miracles which showed, as the Pharisee Nicodemus admitted, that he was sent from God. It was his wisdom, his religious insight, his remarkable and unerring judgment as to who God is and what man should do, which was the phenomenon of the day. He had not “studied” but all addressed him as the pre-eminent Rabbi, the Teacher. He was this, though, in a unique sense. All his superabundant wisdom and knowledge came directly from God — and not from any of the “schools.” There had been something of a discovery of this even when he was a boy. Luke tells us that when Mary and Joseph found him in the Temple, he was dazzling the doctors with his intelligence, his insight, his knowledge, and his probing questions.

So on the one hand, we have in our Gospel scene today this Jesus of Nazareth — by any standards, a personality of utter distinction in the annals of history. I like to set Jesus Christ next to the greatest lights of classical culture, say, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Christ’s human mind, in its intellectual approach, was utterly different from their Greek cast, so full as they were of talent. His human mind was Semitic and in the line of the great prophets. But manifestly, his wisdom far surpassed theirs, as did his instant insight into and grasp of things to do with God and human living. Imagine a dialogue between them — I envisage those Greek sages being profoundly impressed with the intelligence and wisdom of Jesus Christ, let alone with his moral stature. He would have instantly plumbed the depths of their positions, and assessed their value. But of course, Christ’s personal mission in time was not to enter into a dialogue with Greek culture — he would leave that to his body the Church, in the centuries to come. But now, there he is in our Gospel scene today, dining by invitation in the house of a prominent Pharisee, where he was being watched by that class. They could not but respect him. On one occasion they admitted to him that he was swayed by no one, whatever be his rank or position. Christ was manifestly conscious of being the very light of the world. There he was, sovereignly at ease among his silent and cautious critics — and his wisdom and insight thereupon comes into play. He sees that they ensured in their seating their pride of position. They chose the important places, the places where they would be honoured and noticed. In a word, their effort was to exalt themselves — and how typical was this of human behaviour! From age to age ever since the Original Fall, man had tried to exalt himself. Here the leading religious minds and teachers were doing the same. Christ there and then overturns their “wisdom,” their assumptions, their ways, their notions of the good life, their idea of fulfilment. “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honour,” he says to them. “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14: 1, 7-11).

Let us take our scene today, and Christ’s radical summary of the good life, the life that will bring true human exaltation, as yet another instance of his unequalled wisdom and teaching. He is the definitive source of light for man, man who is so prone to dwell in the darkness, a darkness of death. Socrates, so wise, willingly chose to put an end to his own life when directed to do so by civil authority. How far from the wisdom of God! The Pharisees, who, as our Lord said on one occasion, occupied the chair of Moses, were so blind. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life — and he humbled himself unto death. Let us take our stand by him and follow his Way!

“Now, on a Sabbath day Jesus had gone for a meal ...; and they watched him closely.” In our Gospel passage today (Luke 14: 1, 7-11) our Lord is described as going for a meal at the house of one of the leading Pharisees. They were proud — and they were to hear a lesson from our Lord about humility. He was not among friends. There is a detail in this regard that offers food for thought: it is that “they watched him closely.” It leads us to think of what it is to gaze on the face of Christ. In one of his writings Pope Paul VI spoke of how we yearn to see the face of Christ. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of Christ being the face of God. We remember that Gospel scene in which, while Martha bustled about doing the serving and getting irritated with her sister, Mary sat at the Lord’s feet listening to him speaking. She was gazing on the face of Christ with wrapt attention. Our Lord commended her (in this instance) for doing that, and held her up for imitation by Martha. On the other hand we remember how Herod is described in the Gospels as wanting “to see” Jesus. He was curious. But our Lord would have none of it. When he was brought before Herod during his Passion he refused so much as to speak to Herod. And here in our Gospel scene today those who were dining with our Lord “watched him closely”. They lacked the loving humility which is the only appropriate attitude in the presence of Christ. They lacked faith.

The only profitable form of gazing on the Person of Christ is that which is the fruit of faith, hope and love. The Christian in his life of prayer ought be striving to gaze on the face of Christ — at the level of his heart. We call it contemplation. He ought be acting each day out of that contemplation, as a contemplative in action. The source of his life and energy ought be his loving and continuous gaze on Christ, a heart-to-heart gaze in which he knows that in the first instance Christ has been gazing on him. Christ has been gazing on him with love from all eternity. Our gaze on Christ is in response to his loving gaze on us. Indeed, the life of the Christian is a life lived in the warmth of this divine gaze.

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Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 38 (37): 22-23 Forsake me not, O Lord, my God; be not far from me! Make haste and come to my help, O Lord, my strong salvation!

Collect Almighty and merciful God, by whose gift your faithful offer you right and praiseworthy service, grant, we pray, that we may hasten without stumbling to receive the things 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.

Tragedy and challenge beset today’s saint early in life, but Alphonsus Rodriguez found happiness and contentment through simple service and prayer. Born in Spain in 1533, Alphonsus inherited the family textile business at 23. Within the space of three years, his wife, daughter and mother died; meanwhile, business was poor. Alphonsus stepped back and reassessed his life. He sold the business and, with his young son, moved into his sisters’ home. There he learned the discipline of prayer and meditation. Years later, at the death of his son, Alphonsus, almost 40 by then, sought to join the Jesuits. He was not helped by his poor education. He applied twice before being admitted. For 45 years he served as doorkeeper at the Jesuits’ college in Majorca. When not at his post, he was almost always at prayer, though he often encountered difficulties and temptations. His holiness and prayerfulness attracted many to him, including St. Peter Claver, then a Jesuit seminarian. Alphonsus’s life as doorkeeper may have been humdrum, but he caught the attention of poet and fellow-Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, who made him the subject of one of his poems. Alphonsus died in 1617. He is the patron saint of Majorca.

We like to think that God rewards the good even in this life. But Alphonsus knew business losses, painful bereavement and periods when God seemed very distant. None of his suffering made him withdraw into a shell of self-pity or bitterness. Rather, he reached out to others who lived with pain, including enslaved blacks. Among the many notables at his funeral were the sick and poor people whose lives he had touched. May they find such a friend in us! (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Malachi 1: 14-2: 2.8-10; Psalm 130; 1 Thessalonians 2: 7-9.13; Matthew 23: 1-12

Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practise what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the market‑places and to have men call them ‘Rabbi’. But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi’, for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father’, for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher’, for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matthew 23: 1-12)

One Lord and Father In our Gospel today (Matthew 23: 1-12), our Lord reminds us that we have only one Lord and Father, and he is God in heaven, and that we have only one Teacher, and he is Christ. What our Lord is saying is a variation of the first of the Ten Commandments, that there is only one God, and we are to serve him alone. Fr. Ted Tyler

From him comes all authority, and those exercising authority and those subject to it must all strive to acknowledge and serve God alone. No-one, in any sense whatever, is to arrogate independently to himself God’s place, glory or authority. On one occasion our Lord was asked which is the first of the commandments. He said that this is the first, that we are to love the Lord our God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength (Luke 10:27). If the individual and society are ever to learn how to live in happiness and fulfilment, this fundamental commandment must be observed. If God’s authority is neglected and forgotten, the wellbeing of man and society will be neglected and forgotten. Of course, there are all sorts of difficulties in recognizing the authority of God in daily and social life. Our Lord himself alludes to one such, at the start of our Gospel passage (Matthew 23: 1). He tells the people and his disciples that “The scribes and the Pharisees occupy the chair of Moses. You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do.” Here our Lord is addressing those who were subject to authority. There was this difficulty, that even though those exercising authority were not worthy incumbents of their office, their authority had to be respected for they occupied the chair of Moses. In fulfilling our duties in society, we are answerable to persons who exercise civil and social authority, and who, however, may be unworthy. The temptation will be, especially in a democratic society in which authorities are readily attacked, to disregard and have little respect for authority itself because of its all-too human and faulty bearers. We must daily find God in all things, and, to the extent possible, in the authority being exercised over us in social and civil life. Of course, our Lord not only addresses those subject to authority. He also addresses those possessed of authority. To some extent, that will include most of us. He tells those who are in some sense a master or a teacher or a father to remember that God is the only Master, the only Father, and the only Teacher.

In respect to this, let us remember that most people have some influence and some authority. They may possess some authority in the home or in the workplace. They may exercise some influence over others due to their greater knowledge of some field, or because of some other attainments or personal gifts. Whatever be our position and influence and the good we may have done and are currently doing, we must remember that God is its ultimate source and to him we must give the glory. He is the only Master, Father and Teacher. To him we ought be referring those who might be disposed to give us the glory. All this is to say that whoever we are, whether in authority or subject to it, whether influencing others or being influenced by them, whether we are a teacher in some sense or a pupil in some other sense, whatever be our situation, we ought be striving to love and serve God and him alone. We are to serve our fellow man, but always in God and according to his will. It is God who is the Master, the Teacher, the Father. He is the all. The danger of the modern secular age is to accept, allow and aspire to moral goodness while not allowing nor aspiring to religion. We are tempted to a humanism without God, to the attempt to make man central while regarding God as absent. We cheerfully neglect — nay, we tend to banish God from life and society. Our danger is that we shall fail to recognize and serve God in all that we do, and instead accept the prevailing cultural and social assumption, which is of Morality without Religion. Our secular society thinks that it is right and proper to be free of the thought of God and to build our civilization according to what is right, but as if God were not a reality, but a mere opinion, indeed a phantom. The reality of God is quietly and politely shelved and the business of life pursued with other masters, fathers and teachers happily installed in God’s place. We can be infected with this attitude. The virtue of religion, that virtue whereby we give homage to God, is deemed to be a private and unnecessary feature of the human personality. It is looked upon as a prop or a function of something else which is more useful. Our Lord makes it clear in our Gospel today (Matthew 23: 1-12) that no-one and nothing is to usurp the reality and supreme position of God in everything.

Religion is not just a private matter. It is also public and objective, for God who is our Creator, Lord and Redeemer, is the fundamental Reality sustaining all of creation. Let us never, in effect, exalt ourselves before God by pushing him from our sight and service. As our Lord says, “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” Let us make it a daily mission of our life, to do all we can to ensure that in all things God is served, honoured and glorified as the one Lord, Father and Teacher of man, society and all things, seen and unseen.

(E.J.Tyler)

Further Reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2095-2109 (Serve God alone)

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When you are told what to do, let no one show more alacrity than you in obeying; whether it is hot or cold, whether you feel keen or are tired, whether you are young or less so, it makes no odds. Someone who “does not know how to obey” will never learn to command.

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 38 (37): 22-23 Forsake me not, O Lord, my God; be not far from me! Make haste and come to my help, O Lord, my strong salvation!

Wolfgang was born in Swabia, Germany, and was educated at a school located at the abbey of Reichenau. There he encountered Henry, a young noble who went on to become Archbishop of Trier. Meanwhile, Wolfgang remained in close contact with the archbishop, teaching in his cathedral school and supporting his efforts to reform the clergy. At the death of the archbishop, Wolfgang chose to become a Benedictine monk and moved to an abbey in Einsiedeln, now part of Switzerland. Ordained a priest, he was appointed director of the monastery school there. Later he was sent to Hungary as a missionary, though his zeal and good will yielded limited results. Emperor Otto II appointed him Bishop of Regensburg (near Munich). He immediately initiated reform of the clergy and of religious life, preaching with vigour and effectiveness and always demonstrating special concern for the poor. He wore the habit of a monk and lived an austere life. The draw to monastic life never left him, including the desire for a life of solitude. At one point he left his diocese so that he could devote himself to prayer, but his responsibilities as bishop called him back. In 994 he became ill while on a journey; he died in Puppingen near Linz, Austria. His feast day is celebrated widely in much of central Europe. He was canonized in 1052.

On a Sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees. He said to the host who invited him, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbours, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

Religion and life When anyone is described as a “religious person,” the immediate image conjured up is of one who is oriented towards the worship and acknowledgment of God. This, of course, is correct. It is somewhat meaningless to speak of someone as “religious” who does not acknowledge God. However, what is then commonly done is to restrict the notion of religion to the acknowledgment of God, allowing for nothing in the idea of religion beyond this. That is to say, “religion” is merely that dimension of life which is related explicitly to the worship of God and the formal recognition of him in a variety of ways. It is distinct from daily life. In classical Rome, the pontifex maximus (the state high priest) served for life, and he remained, officially, a citizen. He was chairman of the college of the pontifices, 'priests'. They were responsible for the Roman state cult as a whole and for several cults in particular, viz. the cults that had no priestly college of their own (such as the augures, the decemviri sacris faciundis and the fetiales). Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BC) was elected pontifex maximus in 63 BC and kept the office until his death. “Religion” was equated with cult, and Julius Caesar, the high priest, was also a busy and scheming politician, writer of Latin prose, army general, conqueror, and finally “dictator in perpetuity” of the Roman state. Essentially it was he who brought the Republic to being the Empire. In all of this he was chief priest of the state, which tells us something of the notion of religion in Rome. When “religion” is restricted to the practice of cult and prayer alone, religion can be a very comfortable business indeed, and corrupt as well. “Religion” can be divorced from daily life and its moral demands. The activities of daily life are pursued according to norms that have little to do with “God,” whose influence is confined to moments of formal worship and prayer. It means too that “religion” can easily become a means of self-serving and career advancement. Now, one of the distinguishing features of Revealed Religion was its intimate connection with life. While the first three of the Ten Commandments lay down the requirements of religious belief and worship, the remaining seven govern everyday life. Christ stated that the Law and the Prophets hung on two commandments: the love of God and also of neighbour.

This is an immensely important matter in Revealed Religion. It is notoriously the complaint and the charge of those who reject religion that “religious” people are not especially moral or good in everyday life. There is, they insist, a great disparity between their lives and their profession of a moral religion. The prophets inveighed against the practice of religion that involved holocausts and sacrifices while justice and mercy were left undone. This was no religion at all, in God’s sight. We read in Psalm 146:9 that the Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. That is to say, what happens in everyday life is of immense importance in the sight of God. The prophet Isaiah writes: “Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). Again, “Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them” (Isaiah 1: 23). So it is that in our Gospel passage today, our Lord says to the prominent Pharisee and his friends with whom he was dining, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbours; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14). When Judas left the Last Supper, others of the Twelve thought that Christ had told him to buy something for the feast, or that he should give something to the poor (John 13:29) — let us note, that giving to the poor was a practice Christ instilled. This general point recurs in the rest of the New Testament: “The religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world,” James writes (1: 27). Religion is intimately connected with our life in the world, and in particular with all our daily relationships with others, especially with those in need.

Let us resolve to subject every aspect of our lives to the dominion of God and his holy will. This we do above all by entering into union with Jesus Christ and following him in everything, whatever be the cost. The “Kingdom of God,” the “Kingdom of Heaven” is found pre-eminently in him. In him dwells the fulness of the godhead bodily, and by entering into union with him and living in union with him in all aspects of our life, God’s kingdom or rule is established. Let us beware of the perennial danger of separating religion from life, of regarding religion as the business of God, but of daily life being a different business again. No indeed, for Jesus Christ is Lord, Lord of all.

“God never takes back his gifts or revokes his choice.” In everyday life opportunities come our way and consequences flow from our responses to them. A young man is dating with a fine young woman whom perhaps he does not adequately appreciate. He suddenly decides to bring the relationship to an end. Consequences will flow from this — the girl leaves him and finds someone else whom in due course she marries. He will never be able to start again with her, and perhaps he will never find another like her. It may even come to pass that he never finds a spouse. It is not quite the same with God. There are always consequences that flow from our actions, but at every point during this life we can start again with God. St Paul assures us at the beginning of today’s first reading (Romans 11: 29-36) that “God never takes back his gifts or revokes his choice.” If we have failed God and disobeyed him (which of course we have), nevertheless we can repent and start again knowing that God’s choice of us stands. St Paul tells us elsewhere that before the foundation of the world God chose us, chose us in Christ to be holy and full of love in his sight. God’s choice of us to belong to him is an everlasting choice with its origins in eternity, and the gift that accompanied and constituted this choice is that of being “in Christ.” We are incorporated into him, and this gift is the source of all the other heavenly gifts we can enjoy. St Paul tells us in one of his letters that in Christ we receive every heavenly blessing.

Every day, then, let us remind ourselves that whatever be our response to God and his gifts, God never takes back his gifts nor revokes his choice. So then, now I begin! The path to holiness in Christ is before me.

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It’s remarkably stupid for a director to be content with a soul rendering four when it could be rendering twelve.

Liturgical Season	Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
29th Week of Ordinary Time A-1	16	17	18 St Luke, Evangelist	19	20	21	22
30th Week of Ordinary Time A-1	23 World Mission Sunday	24	25	26	27	28 St Simon and St Jude	29
31st Week of Ordinary Time A-1	30	31