Mark 10:45

Tag: Bible

  • I Will Make You Great: Friday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

    Genesis 46:1-7, 28-30

    An important part of getting to know someone is finding out about their background – their childhood, family, whatever details they’d like to share. It gives us a fuller, richer picture of the person, puts what they say and do in context, and helps us come to a better understanding and appreciation of them.

    Of course, we’re much more limited when it comes to getting to know people in the bible, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing to learn. Sometimes, important details lie hidden between the lines, and knowing them helps us not only to learn more about that person but also more about us and God. This is true for one of the most important, indeed foundational, biblical characters we have heard about this week – Jacob, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham.

    As we study the chapters of Genesis that tell us about his life, one thing is clear: Jacob came from a dysfunctional family. It began from the twin brothers’ birth. The name Jacob means “to supplant” or “replace,” and that is what he did, first duping Esau out of his inheritance, then tricking his father into giving him the blessing intended for his slightly older brother. But their parents, Isaac and Rebecca, are the real problem; they play favorites, Rebecca going so far as to help her favorite (Jacob) steal from his brother and get away, while Isaac sat idly by as his favorite (Esau) plotted murder against Jacob. Not what anyone would call a healthy family dynamic.

    Sadly the problem followed Jacob into adulthood, for he too played favorites. We heard this week how his favoritism of Joseph led to such envy in Jacob’s other sons that like their uncle Esau they too plotted to kill their brother – and nearly succeeded.

    Yet we also saw that things don’t always work out the way we think they will. Where in Jacob’s family revenge would be expected, by the grace of God Joseph took a different tack; just yesterday we heard him say to his brothers, It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you (Genesis 45:5).

    And therein lies the lesson: With God’s help, the unchangeable can change. Like Jacob, we are born with problems, born into problems, problems plague us all our lives. They may be dysfunctional relationships, addictions, abuse, the list is endless. Whatever they are we feel powerless to change them, and on our own we probably are. But the story of Jacob teaches us that we are not alone, that no matter what the problems are God has ways of dealing with them that we do not, and that as St. Paul once said, all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

    Although Jacob may have taken too much pride in himself and his own schemes over the years, he never forgot God’s purpose and to humble himself before it. In today’s reading we find him doing exactly that at Beersheba. He’s been there before; recall on Monday Scripture told of him fleeing from Esau as a frightened young man. Then, God spoke to him in a dream and, although the words are slightly different, the main points are exactly the same today: I am God… do not be afraid… I will make you great… I will be with you… I will bring you home. Through all that had happened to him from that first moment on – the joys, the sorrows, the love, the loss, the bliss, and the agony – Jacob was never alone. God was right there with him, doing what he said he would do.

    So let us resolve to respond as Jacob did. Scripture tells us that he took everything he owned and everyone in his family with him to Egypt (Genesis 46:6-7). That is, he was totally committed to whatever God wanted him to do. This takes great faith but that is ours for the asking. Jacob asked for it at Beersheba; we have the present moment, here in His presence. And let us remember too that God is never outdone in generosity. For his act of faith, Jacob was rewarded not only with the joy of holding his long-lost son in his arms once again but also, through the great prosperity and growth that Israel, the nation named after him, would come to enjoy, he could rest secure in the knowledge that God’s plan is far above any of human schemes and His merciful love infinitely bigger than any of our problems.

    The best news of all is that to those who commit themselves to Him as Jacob did hear the same words that Jacob heard. Keep them with you today and everyday. Here they are again: I am God… do not be afraid… I will make you great… I will be with you… I will bring you home.

  • All Things to One Man: The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

    All Things to One Man: The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

    Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9; Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19; John 19:31-37

    In high school we once did an exercise on self-perception. Sister began by asking us to take out a sheet of paper and write down 3 negative things about ourselves. After a couple of minutes she said, “Alright, now write down 3 positive things about yourself.” I can’t remember what I wrote but I know I didn’t list three; I’m not sure I even wrote two. That was Sister’s point; self-conscious teen-agers aside, people in general tend to be very good when it comes to focusing on their negative qualities but not so good when it comes to the positive.

    The same goes for our relationship with God. If you’re anything like me, it’s probably much easier to come up with reasons why He shouldn’t think very highly of you than reasons why He should. Today, on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, our Lord gives us at least three reasons to focus on the positive.

    First, listen again to his words in the 11th chapter of Hosea: When Israel was a child I loved him… I taught Ephraim to walk… took them in my arms… fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks… stooped to feed my child… I will not let the flames consume you (Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8-9). This isn’t the imagery of a God who loves from a distance, impersonally, or until we leave or hurt him; no, this is a God who loves intimately, with a deeply personal, boundless, and most of all, healing and merciful love.

    Second, as St. Paul makes clear, this is a love that goes beyond all words except the one, Eternal Word – Jesus. We can hear Paul struggling to express the inexpressible as he prays that we may have the strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:18-19). This is the key; divine love surpasses human knowledge and can be known only by faith (Ephesians 3:17), the gift of the Father possible only by the strength that comes from the Holy Spirit (CCC §683). To those who have faith, all the riches of grace are available.

    Finally, every image of the Sacred Heart reminds us with its crown of thorns of the cost of this love. We hear in the gospel of the soldier who thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out (John 19:34). There is no love worthy of the name that is not asked to endure insult, temptation, and suffering. From the dawn of humankind it is written into our nature; it’s in our blood. But it isn’t in the blood of Christ, either from his Heavenly Father or his holy Mother, the Immaculate Conception. He willingly took it on. This is perhaps the greatest and most positive of all – that God, purely out of his infinite and merciful love for us, gave his only Son that we would be raised to life eternal. As Christ himself said, there is no greater love than this.

    St. Pio of Pietrelcina, Padre Pio, understood that very well. While passing through a crowd of people all clamoring to get near him, someone shouted, “Padre, you are all things to all men!” He replied, “No, I am all things to one Man.”

    May we all come to that kind of understanding! May we all see the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a day to set aside the negatives and focus on the overwhelming positive – that we too are all things to one Man. We are loved infinitely, personally, and mercifully; we are given the gift of faith which alone can make this love known to us beyond any human understanding; and finally, that as the ultimate expression of this love the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took human form and allowed his own heart to be pierced that we may not only look upon him in mourning for the sinfulness that put him there but with rejoicing that divine love can take even the passion and death of Christ, the greatest insult of all time, and transform it into the greatest victory the world will ever know – the resurrection to eternal life for all who believe and return to God with their whole heart (Joel 2:12).

    Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

  • Lost and Found in Translation: Tuesday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time

    Lost and Found in Translation: Tuesday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time

    Ephesians 5:21-33; Luke 13:18-21

    When people say, “it’s all Greek to me,” they mean that they don’t understand what they’re hearing or reading. We may not realize it but we could often say the same thing about the bible, not so much because it really was written in Greek (and Hebrew) but because things get lost in translation. Sometimes those things don’t matter much; other times they can make a great deal of difference.

    Today’s first reading is a perfect case in point. What may come across as little more than a discourse on marriage is actually a beautiful meditation on various aspects of love that can benefit all people, married or not. The problem is that some of the subtleties lie hidden beneath the surface, lost in translation.

    For example, he begins: Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Although the meaning seems obvious, there are nuances. First, the word we translate as “subordinate” also implies obedience, like servant to master. Second, when he says “one another” he means everyone, not a select few. Third, the phrase “reverence for Christ” literally translates “in the fear of Christ.” So, what seems like a simple exhortation to treat each other well is actually a bold challenge to love like Christ: with the humility that seeks to serve and not to be served, and the fear of the Lord by which we reverence God above all things and others out of love for him.

    When it comes to the married, St. Paul begins with what many today see as a put-down of women: Wives should be subordinate to their husbands…. And while he clearly does follow the custom of placing men at the head of the household, an important subtlety is missing from our text. The original Greek reads, wives should be subordinate to their own husbands…. Whatever the reason, St. Paul clearly feels the need to remind the Ephesians of two additional aspects of love: Chastity and faithfulness. Once again, this is a lesson for us; just as we love the Lord and have no false gods before him, so we are to be chaste – faithful to our state in life – whether lay or clergy, married or single.

    Notice too that St. Paul quotes Genesis: a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is the highest unity we can achieve – a bodily and spiritual communion ordained by God and indivisible by man. When I say “indivisible” I mean exactly that. In the original Hebrew and Greek the word is not joined, but glued. Imagine gluing two sheets of paper together and then, after it has set, trying to separate them. They will tear. We all know of the pain and sadness of the disunity that comes with divorce.

    Not that unity is pain free. In any long-term relationship like marriage, unity requires self-sacrifice. This is especially true as relationships mature over time. Life tends to show us things we didn’t see in the early years; among them, the weaknesses and failings of others. Our natural tendency is to focus on our own pain and suffering, to place blame on others rather than see our own role in them, and to withhold forgiveness rather than make peace with them and ourselves.

    But as St. Paul reminds us, we are to love as Christ loves the Church: Completely, despite and beyond its weaknesses, to the point of dying that she may live. This is the daily discipline of being servant of all, faithful to our state in life whatever it is, and bound to God and each other in a relationship that is life-giving, life-sustaining, and life-affirming, no matter the cost. This is painful but that is the pain of healing, the death that gives way to the new life of resurrection.

    Our Lord points to this in parable form in the gospel, where we see another aspect of love: that it not only unites but multiplies. When the Christian dies to self like leaven, the Church rises like three measures of flour; when husband and wife die to self, their new family flourishes, rising like the branches of the mustard plant toward Heaven, a home for its children.

    This is not possible apart from the grace of God, for God is Love and his grace the glue that binds us one to the other. The power of his grace works within us to form the mind of Christ, to imitate the love of Christ, and to hope more and more in the promise of Christ: that those who love as he loves will one day live as he lives, in the eternal life and infinite love of the Most Holy Trinity.

  • The Slave of the Slaves: Memorial of St. Peter Claver

    Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible.

    1 Corinthians 9:19

    Imagine being dragged aboard a ship, naked and chained in the darkness below deck, lying helpless for several weeks, through rough seas and stifling heat. There are over 500 of you; males here, females there. You are fed just enough to keep you alive. Starvation, disease, and death are rampant. No one knows where you’re going or what awaits you when the hatch finally opens. Over the centuries of the slave trade, millions of people saw that hatch open only to a lifetime of slavery in a strange New World.

    Yet, like a drop of mercy from heaven, hundreds of thousands of these same people saw that hatch open to reveal the caring, concerned face of a gentle Spanish Jesuit. He would come below and find the newborns who were still alive, pour water over them, make the sign of the Cross and pray. He then ministered to the dying, and the dead he had respectfully removed. To the sick he brought medicine and bandaged their wounds. Those too sick to leave the ship on their own he helped carry above. When he got to you, he would clean you, give you food, clothing, and fresh water. He would speak warmly and gently through an interpreter, although no translation was needed for his touch. This was a man fluent in the language of love and by the time he had finished, he had restored a measure of the dignity so shamefully taken away. Every moment, this man acted as if he was your slave and happy to be nothing more.

    That’s because he was.

    The man was Peter Claver, a 17th century priest and Jesuit who devoted his life to ministering however he could to every slave shackled in the darkness aboard the hundreds of ships landing in the port city of Cartagena. Fr. Claver took to heart the words of St. Paul, who said, Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible (1 Corinthians 9:19).

    Father’s devotion to the service of slaves sprang from his desire to imitate the service of his model, the Blessed Mother, to whom he was devoted. As a young novice he was so moved by a pilgrimage to one her shrines that he wrote, “I must dedicate myself to the service of God until death, on the understanding that I am like a slave, wholly occupied in the service of his master.” He traveled to the New World after hearing that millions of enslaved people died there knowing nothing of Christ. After his first few years serving them, Father signed the document of his final profession to the Society of Jesus with the words, “Peter Claver, slave of the slaves, forever.”

    Before the slaves were sent on, Father took whatever time was given him to teach them about Christ. He used pictures, rosaries, crucifixes, anything he could find. He concluded every session by teaching them to say, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, You are my Father. I am sorry for having offended You. I love You very much. I love You very much.” It is said that he personally baptized over 300,000 slaves.

    Fr. Claver continued his ministry for 40 years. Finally, sick, frail and exhausted, he knelt and kissed the feet of his young Jesuit successor and on the day he predicted – the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 8th, 1654 – he died at the age of 73.

    portsoy-1244572_640Although the slave trade of that era is thankfully no more, slavery still abounds. Who are the people in our own lives, chained in the darkness of sin, feeling helpless, uncertain and fearful of their destiny? Who are those with wounded or even dying spirits, on the brink of losing hope? Who are those starving for affection, for shelter, for safety, for dignity? Will you be the one to open the hatch to descend into their suffering and restore what dignity you can?

    Let us pray that we, like St. Peter Claver, may be the slave of the slaves, forever.

    St. Peter Claver, pray for us.

  • Fed to the Dogs: Wednesday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

    Fed to the Dogs: Wednesday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

    Matthew 15:21-28

    There are times in the gospel when Jesus says something that makes us ask, “Did he really just say that?” For example, his mother came to see him and what does he do but turn to his disciples and say, Who is my mother? (Matthew 12:48). Then there is the time he said, If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away (Matthew 5:29). Today is yet another, as he says to a woman pleading for help, It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs (Matthew 15:26).

    Did he really just say that?

    Well, yes. The question is, what did he mean? To answer that, we have to know more about the context.

    To begin with, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 15:21), pagan lands. We might wonder why he went there but I think it was for two reasons: First, as the Catechism tells us, Christ comes to meet every human being (CCC 2560); he wants none lost but all brought to knowledge of him. Second, he has just sparred with the Pharisees about what truly defiles a person, teaching them that it is not what goes into the mouth that matters but what comes out of it (Matthew 15:1-20); that is, vice or virtue. Where better to demonstrate that than pagan territory for, by implication, the Gentiles are not defiled (as the Hebrews assumed) because of who they are; to the contrary, there may be great virtue among them. He has come to see.

    The Canaanite woman does not disappoint. She too has come to see – to see Him – and on finding him shows the faith to call him Lord and the love to pray on behalf of her child: Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon (Matthew 15:22). She doesn’t know it but the Holy Spirit is moving within her, making her as St. Augustine once said, “a beggar before God” (CCC 2559).

    And a persistent beggar! Three times she is rebuffed. First when Jesus does not answer her (Matthew 15:23), again when he says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24). Anyone less persevering might have gone away but the Holy Spirit prompts her to move closer, now to the piety of doing him homage and pleading, Lord, help me.(Matthew 15:25). If it is help that comes it is of a mysterious sort, coming in the third rebuff, the now brief but infamous parable, It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs (Matthew 15:26).

    Before we get to the term “dogs,” consider the word “food.” Its literal translation is “bread.” In reality, Jesus is the Living Bread; in the parable, he is referring to himself. As for “dogs,” it is true that Hebrews compared people to dogs or called them dogs to imply they were either of very low status (e.g., 2 Kings 8:13; Exodus 22:31; Deuteronomy 23:18; 2 Samuel 3:8; Proverbs 26:11; Ecclesiastes 9:4; 2 Samuel 9:8; 1 Samuel 24:14) or evil (Philemon 3:2; Revelation 22:15). And although Christ softened the term by changing it to puppy or house dog, it was still in no way complimentary. However, taken as a whole, Christ is challenging her by way of parable to ask herself, “Jesus is the bread, Israel are the children; where do I belong? How am I fed?”

    Her answer is inspired: Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters (Matthew 15:27). Not only does she say nothing about the term ‘puppies,’ she humbly puts herself in the dog’s place yet proposes an ending to his parable that allows everyone to partake in Christ, Jew or Gentile, each in their own place. The Holy Spirit has enlightened her mind with the gift of understanding; she has begun to see that the answer to her prayer, to all prayer, means uniting her will with the will of Christ, which as we said above is that none be lost but all come to knowledge of God, who is love.

    Thus, through this faithful woman’s inspired reply to his challenge, Christ has vindicated his argument to the Pharisees that the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart (Matthew 15:18), in her case humility, perseverance, love, and understanding. These are as he said the key to “great faith” (Matthew 15:28) and they only happen when we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, slowly but surely uniting our will to the perfect will of God.

  • The Wounds of Love: St. Birgitta of Sweden

    The Wounds of Love: St. Birgitta of Sweden

    Galatians 2:19-20; John 15:1-8

    I once instructed a woman in the RCIA program who excelled in her studies of the faith. After receiving the sacraments she moved away and I lost track of her. Years later, I learned that she had stopped practicing the faith. She was now “spiritual but not religious.” I think that means she believes that while there is a spiritual dimension to the world, it isn’t what we understand as the faith most fully revealed to us in Christ.

    The sticking point for her, as for many, may well have been the passion and death of our Lord. Indeed, the crucifixion was called by St. Paul a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). But to one of the saints, St. Birgitta of Sweden, the crucifixion held a special place; it was the nexus of the physical and spiritual worlds.

    Birgitta lived a life full of the joys and sorrows of family. Born in Sweden around the year 1303, the daughter of a governor, by age 42 she had already been a wife for 28 years and a widow for one. She had a wide and deep experience of motherhood; as mother of 4 boys and 4 girls, she saw one daughter run off to marry a troublemaker, one son die as a boy, one as a man, and another daughter grow up to become St. Catherine of Sweden.

    She also knew the life of the working world. While raising her own children she served as lady-in-waiting to the queen of Sweden. Her kind, motherly way drew her into the confidence of the king and queen, both of whom tended to enjoy worldly life too much for their own good. Birgitta worked as hard as she could to keep their religious concerns before them; this became a frustrating and unfortunately futile struggle.

    Finally, Birgitta knew the religious life as well. After becoming a widow and devoting herself to care of the poor, who greatly loved her, she dedicated buildings and land on family property to a new contemplative order. She wrote the rule for her order which became known as the Order of the Most Holy Savior.

    At the same time, Birgitta lived a full life in the spiritual world. She was a mystic. At age seven, she had a vision of being crowned by the Blessed Mother. Three years later came her most profound mystical experience: The crucified Christ appeared to her and bid her gaze upon him. When she asked who had so cruelly treated him, he replied, “Those who despise me and spurn my love for them.” This was her own Damascus road moment; although she had many visions, dreams, and locutions afterwards, she devoted the rest of her life to the contemplation of Christ’s suffering.

    After wisely consulting her spiritual advisor and obtaining his approval, Birgitta began to share her visions with the world. She met with Magnus, the king of Sweden, and advised him that Christ would visit a plague on the land if he and the queen did not change their ways. As usual, he laughed off her vision. The Black Death came two years later, wiping out half the population. Needless to say, the king stopped laughing.

    Birgitta next focused her attention on the popes, who had long since deserted Rome in fear for their lives. Leaving Sweden with her daughter Catherine, she moved to Rome. In the midst of its crumbling churches and society, Birgitta ministered to the sick, fed the poor, housed pilgrims, and called on the pope to return. Her call took on a special intensity due to her dislike of pope Clement VI, who she called “a murderer of souls, more unjust than Pilate and more cruel than Judas.” During a thunderstorm on the night of December 3rd 1350, lightning struck the bells of St. Peter’s, melting them. Birgitta prophesied this as a sign that Clement’s life was coming to an end. He died a few days later. When the next pope fled to get away from her Birgitta literally chased him down, begged him to approve her order, which he did, and to return to Rome, which he did not do. After her death in 1373, her call for the popes to return was taken up by St. Catherine of Siena. Not long after, the papacy returned to Rome to stay. Birgitta was vindicated.

    In the first reading, St. Paul wrote:

    I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me (Galatians 2:19-20).

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    Birgitta’s life is a testament to the triumph of St. Paul’s words. From the moment of that first overwhelming spiritual encounter with the suffering, crucified Christ when she was 10 years old, she began to internalize them; to sense as we all must, not only the pain of Christ’s passion but the passion behind his pain. The ultimate reality of the cross is love, a love so great it unites heaven and earth, the physical and spiritual. What else could it be but love that would cause God himself to take on our humanity, our sinfulness, and in the face of humanity’s rejection, nail it to the cross? Birgitta spent her life contemplating not the pain of futility but the pain which Oscar Wilde called the wounds of love. In her own way, St. Birgitta spent her life showing her family, her king, her people, and her pope that this is not only a love worth dying for; it is a love worth living for – eternally.

    St. Birgitta, pray for us.

  • No Reluctant Prophet: Monday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

    No Reluctant Prophet: Monday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time

    Micah 6:1-4, 6-8; Psalm 50:23; Matthew 12:38-42

    So far in this chapter of Matthew we have seen Jesus being treated by the Pharisees like a man on trial. They have twice accused him of violating the sabbath, once of being in league with demons, and now, joined by the scribes, they confront him with the demand for a sign from God (Matthew 12:38).

    Given their lack of faith in Jesus this may seem reasonable but it betrays at least two problems they have in their relationship with God. First, no scribe or Pharisee, no human being is ever in a position to put God on trial or make Him prove anything. If anyone is on trial it’s us, as the prophet Micah said in the first reading: the LORD has a plea against his people, and he enters into trial with Israel (6:2). What’s more, we don’t get to tell God who He works through or how He does things. As He also said through Micah, I brought you up from the land of Egypt… I released you… I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (6:4). God calls the people, God determines the path. Second, notice how Christ responds to the demand of the scribes and Pharisees by speaking of an “unfaithful” – or “adulterous” – generation (Matthew 12:39). This nuptial language goes to the heart of the real problem, which is the failure of these men to understand that our relationship with God is not a contract, or something we negotiate. It is a covenant, a mutual giving of our entire selves one to the other; a commitment that is total and unto death.

    Jesus drives this point home with true irony by bringing up Jonah for as everyone knew, Jonah was a prophet who was “total” only in his defiance of God’s will and “unto death” only in his effort to avoid doing it. The so-called “reluctant” prophet, Jonah sailed the other way when God called him to preach to pagan Nineveh, tried to drown himself in the sea when he got caught, spoke as little prophecy as possible, angrily complained when Nineveh repented, and worried more about losing the shade from a plant than about the possibility of over a hundred thousand Ninevites dying. Jonah was the perfect example of how not to commit yourself to God.

    Yet Christ took that prophet and made a sign out of him: Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale… so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40). Out of that one point of deep darkness – the disobedient man’s descent into the belly of the beast – Christ brings one point of brilliant light – the obedient Son of Man’s descent into the heart of the earth, or, as we say in the Apostles’ Creed, his descent to the dead. There of course he would preach as Jonah could only wish to, and release those repentant souls who had been awaiting the redemption only He could bring.

    Had the scribes and Pharisees recognized the prophetic truth that Christ had just spoken, they would have known that all they had left was the question from Micah: With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow before God most high (6:6)? Since they did not, we turn to ourselves, for we too are on trial. In our own ways, we are all guilty of being a reluctant prophet: Avoiding various calls to serve, stubbornly resisting God’s will, doing the minimum possible, complaining to God about people whose repentance only He can know, and worrying more about our own comfort than about the suffering of many around us.

    So, with what shall we come? Scripture makes it clear: Prayer and sacrifice. As Micah urges us to do right, love goodness, and walk humbly with God (6:8), we pray for the virtues: Prudence, to know what is right; fortitude, to do it; wisdom, to see and love God’s goodness in all people; humility, to walk with God where He leads; and faith, to trust and praise Him at all times. This is a sacrifice, for like Jonah we are inclined to do what we want, love what we want, and walk where we please. But through the psalmist God reassures us: He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God (Psalm 50:23). The Salvation of God is Christ, who does only right, is love and goodness itself, and who walked in perfect humility all the way from the heart of his Father to the womb of his Mother, from the height of the cross to the heart of the earth, and from the Sacraments he has given the Church into the hearts of all believers.

  • Out of Blindness: Feast of St. Maria Goretti

    Out of Blindness: Feast of St. Maria Goretti

    1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20; John 12:24-26

    The priest, psychologist, and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once said that there are two types of spiritual loneliness, each a kind of blindness. The first comes from being out of touch with God; this is the blindness of too little light. The second is just the opposite; it is the blindness of too much light, or an intimacy with God that exceeds our thoughts and feelings. Both kinds of loneliness, and their cures, are hinted at in our readings and in the lives of St. Maria Goretti and her neighbor, Alessandro Serenelli.

    Luigi Goretti and Giovanni Serenelli partnered as sharecroppers on an estate just south of Rome in the early 20th century. Their families occupied separate flats but shared a kitchen. They had little else in common. The Gorettis were pious and hard-working, their daughter Maria charming and of unwavering faith. The Serenellis were religiously indifferent and struggled with alcoholism, mental illness, and physical abuse. Their son Alessandro, 8 years Maria’s senior, was sullen, withdrawn, and mired in the pornography of the time.

    Fr. Nouwen wrote that the loneliness of being out of touch with God leaves us anxiously searching for something or someone to give us a sense of belonging and home. In his loneliness, Alessandro could have reached out in friendship to Maria but he preferred the darkness, blind to the truth spoken by St. Paul that as members of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit, the body is not for immorality (1 Corinthians 6:13). To him, Maria was not a person to relate to but a thing to use. On a hot July afternoon in 1902 the 20 year-old finally cornered the girl and tried to force himself upon her. Repeatedly Maria cried, “No! It is a sin! It is not God’s will! You will go to hell!” Angered and frustrated by her resistance, Alessandro stabbed her 14 times with a metal file, then fled. For 20 hours Maria suffered from those wounds until she died, just three months before her 12th birthday.

    The second loneliness mentioned by Fr. Nouwen is the blindness of too much light; not a poverty of God’s presence but of our ability to relate to it. This requires love; as we fail to love we feel without God, though he is all around. In the gospel Jesus says, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain – or more literally – it remains alone (John 12:24). Christ doesn’t want us to remain alone; he wants us to remain in him (John 15:4) by loving one another as he has loved us (John 15:12), even to the death.

    Maria Goretti knew this. While she did not care for Alessandro the way he wanted, there is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend (John 15:13) and she was his friend to the end. She resisted his advances not only for her own sake but also for his, keeping him from sinning against his own body as well as hers. She reminded him of the primacy of God’s will and warned him of the eternal consequences of his actions. Ultimately she showed him the importance of the virtue of chastity by martyring herself for it and, most Christ-like of all, she died forgiving him to the point of praying that one day he would be with her in Paradise. We should all have such a friend.

    This is the love that bears fruit and eventually did in the life of Alessandro Serenelli. Years into his incarceration, little Maria came to him in a dream and once again made clear that she forgave him and was his intercessor before our Heavenly Father. From that moment, the grace of conversion worked within him; he became a model prisoner, was released early, begged forgiveness of Maria’s mother (which was granted), and worked in a monastery for the rest of his life, devoted to the little-girl-now-Saint who he knew was waiting and praying for him.

    You and I know both kinds of blindness from our own experience. Perhaps we have at times allowed ourselves to drift away from God, to remain comfortable in the darkness of a particular sin or sinful way of life; to seek gratification in places and things that can never satisfy us. It is a true friend who has the courage and love to tell us, “No. It is a sin. It is against God’s will.” And what a great blessing to be that person for someone else; to help strengthen the graces of faith and hope within them, as Maria Goretti did. And maybe we have also suffered the blindness of too much light; times when we knew God was calling us deeper but we had grown comfortable where we were; times when when we took him and his merciful love for granted; times when we spoke of our great love for Christ but then ignored him, needy on the street. Again, it is a true friend like Maria Goretti who is willing to model for us the virtuous love that leads us out of that blindness, the love to which Christ calls us all – the love that glorifies God in our body (1 Corinthians 6:20) and preserves our life for all eternity.

    St. Maria Goretti, pray for us.

  • A Mother’s Love: Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

    Acts 1:12-14; John 19:25-34

    If my mother said one thing to me consistently from the time I can remember, it was that she loved me. She said it all the time. When she felt the need to go beyond that, she’d say, “You will never know how much I love you until you have children of your own.”

    To me, that’s a way of saying that the deepest love cannot be described, it can only be experienced. That may be true, but perhaps science has begun to come close. I came across a recent study that tried to capture the bond between a mother and her children neurologically. In one part, a group of mothers were shown images of people under stress and asked to imagine themselves in that situation. Various brain responses were recorded. Next, they were asked to imagine their children in those same situations and were again measured. The responses of many of these women were nearly identical in both cases; in other words, mothers tended to feel what their child was going through as if they themselves were going through it. As far as they were concerned, they and their child were one.

    In light of this, let us pause and reflect on the scene in our gospel reading today. Notice that John, unlike the other evangelists, places Mary right at the cross, not at a distance from it. Our instinctive reaction is to imagine what she felt watching her child suffer so. What mother would not suffer at such a moment, let alone the Blessed Mother? Despite the pain, despite the abandonment of nearly everyone else, Mary remained at his side. Over and above this consider her lifelong, steadfast faithfulness. The gospels make it clear: Mary is the only person to be with Jesus at every pivotal moment of his life from conception to death. She is his mother, but she is his disciple first. Her life is a testament to the advice she herself gave to the wedding stewards at Cana: Do whatever he tells you (John 2:5).

    Knowing that, her Son gives his mother more to do. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” (John 19:26). Note the high regard Jesus has for Mary. He speaks when he sees her; he speaks first to her; most importantly, he expands her role as mother to now include the ideal or Beloved Disciple. In the words of theologian Fr. Raymond Brown, this is Christ’s “ last-willed … act of empowerment that both reveals and makes come about a new relationship.”1

    That new relationship is Mary as mother of the Church, for Christ has raised her from being mother of the head to mother also of his Mystical Body. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Church proclaims from ancient times that she was born from the wounded side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross.2

    jesus-284515_640Mary understood this and, as in all things, obeyed her Lord. That is why in the first reading we find her with the Church – the disciples in the upper room – in prayer. Mary has the most marvelous intercessory role; obedient daughter of the Father, mother of his only Son, and spouse of the Holy Spirit. She is in the perfect position to intercede for the Church.

    Someone once said that the word ‘mother’ isn’t a noun as much as it’s a verb. So today, on the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, consider how Mary’s role from the beginning has been to ‘mother’ people to God by being a model of prayer, discipleship, and unconditional love. And operating on the principle that we will never know how much our Mother loves us until we have children of our own, we must remember that Mary’s model of motherhood is meant to be imitated; we too are called to ‘mother’ people into the Church.

    If we don’t know where to start learning from her, begin with the rosary. From the joyful mysteries alone we learn humility, love of neighbor, poverty of spirit, obedience, and piety. Every major event in her life a mystery, every mystery with its own fruit, every fruit centered on Christ. That is the key; Mary teaches us through the rosary what she teaches through her life; that bringing people to the Church is nothing more or less than bringing them to her Son and allowing him to stir within them the flame of divine love which truly cannot be described but only experienced, and in which we are truly one.

    Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

    Mass, June 1 2020

    1Brown, Fr. R.E., SS (1994). The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.. p 1021.

  • Truth Beyond the World: The Feast of St. George

    Revelation 21:5-7; Luke 9:23-26

    When I was a boy my favorite comic book was The Amazing Spiderman. Every month I haunted the drugstore waiting for the next issue. When it finally arrived I’d read it over and over again. It was great fun imagining myself as the quirky yet powerful superhero.

    Although comic books date back only to the 1930’s and 40’s, the kids of bygone eras had something every bit as exciting: The Golden Legend, a classic of the faith from the 13th century, which contained in great and often colorful detail the dashing exploits of the heroes of ancient Christianity.

    Among the most dashing was St. George. Like most saints of the early Church, little is known. He appears to have been a young soldier martyred in Palestine around the year 304. What we do know is that there must have been something especially appealing about him, for he quickly became legendary. The Golden Legend includes a few stories about him, the most familiar being the dragon. Passing through a foreign kingdom and coming upon a princess about to be devoured by a dragon, George slayed the dragon and converted the kingdom to Christ. There is also the amazing story of his martyrdom. Arrested during a persecution of Christians, George was handed over to the torturers. Despite their best attempts, which included beating him literally to pieces, crushing him beneath heavy spiked wheels, and submerging him in molten lead, George miraculously reassembled unharmed. Amazed and inspired by this, the governor’s own wife converted to the faith. Infuriated, he had her executed and George finally martyred by beheading.

    But that’s not the end of the story. If he was powerful in life, St. George was even more so in death. The Legend tells of victories won by soldiers carrying his relics into battle, of healings at his tomb by those placing their hand in it, and of healings of those who touched the chains he wore in prison. His tomb became a place of pilgrimage and churches bearing his name were built as far away as Italy. Little wonder that England, whose Crusaders brought home his story, chose him as its national patron, that a kingdom in the Caucasus mountains was named Georgia in his honor, or that to this day Palestinian Muslims, Jews, and Christians would all honor him and ask his intercession for those suffering from various illnesses. Clearly, St. George became a man of mythic proportions.

    Unfortunately many stumble on the word “myth.” As early as the 5th century, the stories of St. George were dismissed as fantasy. Like some ancient, amazing Spiderman, he was too large for life; his adventures unreal and unrealistic; the product of uneducated, unsophisticated people. A fairy tale.

    They completely miss the point, as Chesterton knew when he said, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” Or, to paraphrase the French philosopher Jean-Paul Ricœur, the purpose of myths is not to tell the truth about the world but the truth beyond it. The deeper truth about St. George is written between the lines of the stories, not within them. What matters is not that St. George slayed a dragon but that, in committing to follow Christ, he received the grace to slay the dragons in his own life. Similarly, it doesn’t matter whether he was actually beaten to pieces, crushed by wheels, submerged in molten lead, and miraculously reassembled; the truth is that St. George loved Christ and did what he asked in the gospel; he took up his cross daily and followed him (Luke 9:23), saving his life by quite literally losing it.

    statue-1394654_1920Of course these truths are not reserved to St. George, they are for all of us. In Revelation Christ says, Behold, I make all things new (Revelation 21:5); for that to mean anything, we must ask for the grace to find and slay our own dragons. We all have them; they are the sins we allow to linger, the attachments we find hardest to put aside, and the fear, self-doubt, and self-condemnation that keep us from drawing nearer to God. The fear is real because the pain is real; it is the pain of having our pride beaten to pieces, allowing our bodies to be crushed by illness or infirmity, and submerging ourselves in the depths of humility. Nevertheless, the truth is that if we allow the power of God to work within us, we will experience what even the legend of St. George could never imagine: The joy of being reassembled into the person that Christ has called us from all eternity to be.

    St. George, pray for us.